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The significant progress in improving people’s health in Africa has been commended by delegates attending the 67th session WHO Regional Committee for Africa, which began today in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. This follows the presentation of the 2016-2017 Biennial Report on the Work of WHO in the African Region by Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO Regional Director for Africa. The report highlights progress achieved during the past biennuim in the Region in emergency preparedness and response, elimination of priority diseases including HIV, TB, malaria; tackling non-communicable diseases, progress in protecting children from illness and deaths, among others.

For more than 40 years, the World Health Organization (WHO) has worked to control river blindness (onchocerciasis), the second major infectious cause of blindness in Africa. Today, 30 years after a major donation of medication by Merck & Co, a pharmaceutical company, and after 20 years of the success of the African Program for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC) the reduction of the disease intensity has allowed WHO to shift the goal from control to elimination – a really ambitious achievement.

2017 marks the 5th anniversary of the World Health Organization's roadmap on NTDs, the World Health Assembly resolution on NTDs (WHA66.12) and the London Declaration.

The functional review exercise for WHO South Sudan Country office successfully commenced on 24 August, 2017. This six-day exercise is part of the WHO transformation agenda (2015-2020), which the WHO Africa Region has embarked on for all the 47 WHO Country Offices in the Region. South Sudan WHO country office is the 5th to be reviewed among the 18 countries scheduled for this year.

The 4th Acting On The Call (AOTC) conference started on the 24th August 2017 at the African Union, Addis Ababa Ethiopia with a theme “Overcoming Critical Barriers to Maternal and Child Survival”. The AOTC conference which is hosted by the governments of Ethiopia and India gathered more than 500 participants from 24 countries and held in the presence of the President of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia, Ministers and high level policymakers from the public and private sectors, NGOs and UN agencies including UN Women, UNICEF, UNFPA and WHO.

The sight of a long queue of patients waiting for their names to be called to see the doctor or nurse at a hospital or health centre is a familiar spectacle that drives home the message that the shortage of skilled health workforce is an issue that warrants urgent attention. There is no doubt that hospitals or health centres are busy places. The shortage of skilled health workforce means that a limited number of doctors and nurses have to attend to hundreds of patients daily and quality health care can’t be rushed.

As part of preparations in the formulation of the Programme Budget for the next biennium, officials from the WHO Country Office and the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare have participated in a one-day meeting to review the Plan of Action for 2018-219.