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Aiming to identify emerging environmental threats to people’s health and agree on a strategic action plan for the region, African Ministers of health and environment will meet for the Third Interministerial Conference on Health and Environment from 6 to 9 November in Libreville, Gabon. The conference jointly organized by the government of Gabon, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Environment will discuss how to turn health and environmental policies into action.

Just under three weeks of having landed in South Africa as the new World Health Organization (WHO) Country Representative in South Africa, Dr Akpaka Kalu, has already held a series of introductory meetings with United Nations (UN) Resident Coordinator (RC), Ms Nardos Bekele-Thomas; South Africa’s Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi; Member of the Executive Committee for Health for the KwaZulu National Provincial Department, Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo; KwaZulu Natal Province Head of Health, Dr Musa Gumede; and the University of KwaZulu Natal WHO Collaborating Centre for Educating Nurses and Midwives in Problem-solving. Beyond introducing himself, Dr Kalu also focused on learning about South Africa’s state of health from the key informants and share WHO’s mandate of supporting member states in improving their health outcomes; affirming that WHO would continue to support the national health system in three investment pillars: normative guidance; implementation support; and generation and use of evidence to support implementation and guide policies and strategies.

The beginning of November in Dakar, Senegal, marks the end of the rainy season and the start of the peak in air pollution levels that the dry season brings. While August and September are the best months for breathing in the city, the pollution levels from December to March are, on average, above recommended safety levels.

The World Health Organization is supporting the Ministry of Health of South Sudan, to train a total of 214 members of the Rapid Response Teams at the national level and in all the Ebola virus disease (EVD) high-risk states.

Addis Ababa, Oct. 18 2018: Ethiopia launches the 7th round National Health Account (NHA). . A health account (HA) aims to generate up-to-date empirical evidence on spending in health care in order to inform health policy formulation and development. The Ethiopian government is committed to track spending on health regularly every two or three years and six rounds of health accounts were conducted since the HA introduced in to the country in 2000.