Samara, 20 April 2016 – The WHO Ethiopia Country Office (WCO Ethiopia) at the request of the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health conducted training on Early Warning Alert and Response System (EWARS) for the Public Health Emergency Management (PHEM) focal persons at health center and district level.

Abuja, 22 April 2016 - Nigeria has successfully conducted the ‘switch’ from using trivalent Oral Polio Vaccine (tOPV) to bivalent Oral Polio Vaccine (bOPV) in the routine immunization programme. The switch is pursuant to the end game strategy following the global certification of eradication of Type 2 polio virus in 2015.

Brazzaville, 22 April 2016 – As the world gets closer to global polio eradication, all 47 countries in the African Region are joining the rest of the world to switch from trivalent Oral Polio Vaccine (tOPV) to bivalent Oral Polio Vaccine (bOPV) in routine immunization schedules.

Accra, Ghana - A two-day meeting for the Neglected Tropical Disease Regional Programme Review Group (NTD-RPRG) on Preventive Chemotherapy Accra, Ghana (18-19 April 2016) was held in Accra, Ghana.

The purpose of the meeting was to advise the Regional NTD programme on country NTD plans, interventions and results for scaling up/down large scale preventive chemotherapy and evaluating impact of programmes towards the 2020 goals. 

A 3-day workshop to review and finalize the All Hazard Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan was held in the Veta Conference Hall in Dodoma from 18thApril 2016 to 20thApril 2016. This workshop which was organized by the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children (MOHCDGEC) brought together participants from the Emergency Preparedness and Response Section (EPRS) of the MOHCDGEC, WHO, CDC, Ministry of Home Affairs, Academic Institution and the Private Sector.

Abuja, 20 April 2016 - Indications are rife that the immunity gaps identified in 70 local government areas (LGAs) located in 11 southern states of Nigeria will soon be reduced. The optimism follows the implementation of Short Interval Additional Doses (SIAD) strategy in the affected states which culminated in the vaccination of over six (6) million children with the last batch of trivalent Oral Polio Vaccine (tOPV) on the eve of the global switch to bivalent OPV.

Accra, 20 April 2016 – The Ministry of Health and WHO with support from Sanofi Espoir Foundation conducted a national review of the Fight Against Epilepsy Initiative, WHO Pilot Programme on Reducing Epilepsy Treatment Gap was conducted on 19 April 2016. The review was intended to take an in-depth look at the performance of the programme over the past 4 years (2012 to 2015) within the context of the large numbers of epilepsy cases (270 000) and a treatment gap estimated at 85% and agree on areas of scale up.

Blantyre, Malawi - From 18 to 23 April 2016 the Ministry of Health in collaboration with the WHO implemented the first training session for the management of District Health Systems for the District Health Management Teams (DHMT) from the South West and South East health zones representing 13 districts. The training took place at the Malawi Sun Hotel, in Blantyre. The guest of honor was Mrs Chimwemwe Banda, Principal Secretary, MOH and among the distinguished guests was Dr Eugene Nyarko, WHO Representative.

19 April 2016 – As Angola grapples with its worst yellow fever outbreak in decades, the Ministry of Health, with the support of the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners have extended the vaccination campaign beyond the capital Luanda into Huambo and Benguela – 2 of the other 5 provinces reporting local transmission.

The East African Advanced Course on Pharmacovigilance was held in Asmara, Eritrea from 10th to 16th April 2016 under the theme “Developing Proactive Pharmacovigilance and Risk Management Strategies in East Africa”. This course brought together 81 participants from 10 African countries acting in their individual capacities as experts and/or stakeholders in pharmacovigilance (PV) in Africa and six countries from Asia, USA and Europe.