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South Sudan has joined the rest of the world in commemorating World Hepatitis Day under the theme “Eliminate Hepatitis” on 28 July 2017, at the University of Juba, college of medicine.

Poliomyelitis (polio) is a highly infectious viral disease, which mainly affects young children. The virus is transmitted by person-to-person spread mainly through the faecal-oral route and multiplies in the intestine, from where it can invade the nervous system and can cause paralysis. In the event of a polio outbreak, it is important that all countries, in particular those with frequent travel and contacts with the affected countries and areas, strengthen surveillance for Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) cases in order to rapidly detect any new virus importation and to facilitate a rapid response.

Organisations involved in managing health emergencies and disease outbreaks in the African Region have agreed on better ways of coordinating their activities in the event of a crisis so as to save more lives and resources.

The Transformation Agenda is a programme for accelerating the implementation of WHO reform within the WHO African Region. It is a vision and a strategy for change aimed at facilitating the emergence of “the WHO that the staff and stakeholders want”. Its objective is to improve delivery of results with clearer links to better health outcomes in countries, focusing on countries’ health priorities in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals.

To respond to the grave food security and address the alarming nutritional emergency in children, WHO has intensified its response focusing on inpatient therapeutic nutrition programs, through the distribution of essential medicines. In June 2017, WHO distributed 50 sever acute malnutrition (SAM) kits, to treat over 2 500 children suffering from SAM with medical complications. The SAM kits were dispatched to 13 hospitals, 25 primary health care centers and 2 health facillities in the Protection of Civilians (PoCs) supporting Inpatient Therapeutic Programs (ITP) in the Greater Equatoria Regions, Northern Bahr el Ghazal, Unity, Upper Nile and Jonglei and Counties with high prevalence of Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) to provide sustainable lifesaving interventions.

The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) convened the regional expert meeting on Medicine Regulatory Harmonization (MRH), on 17 July, 2017 which was conducted at the Intercontinental Addis Hotel, in Addis Ababa. The aim of the IGAD MRH initiative is to improve access to safe, effective and quality medicines by the population of the region. IGAD is one of the regional Economic Community (REC) of the Africa region established in 1996 with eight member states, and among these six have established the National Medicine Regulatory Authority.

The World Health Organization Country Representative in Tanzania, Dr. Matthieu Kamwa, visited Zanzibar as part of the continuing WHO support. Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous part of the Untied Republic of Tanzania, located 25 to 50 kilometers from the mainland. It consists of two main islands, Unguja (the main island) and Pemba and several small ones.