The Ministry of Health of Rwanda organized from 29th to 31st March 2016, in Bugesera District,  a three day International Conference on health financing in collaboration with its partners including WHO.  The theme of the Conference was “Health financing reforms in the eve of sustainable development goals: a look at the past 15 years of health reform”.

As many as 1 in 5 Liberians suffer a mild to moderate mental disorder, according to WHO estimates, yet the country has only one registered psychiatrist and, until recently, the vast majority of health workers had a limited understanding of mental illness.

This is changing however, as WHO and partners are helping to equip health workers across the country with the skills to provide front-line care for people with mental illness.

Kyenjojo, 30th March 2016 - Uganda commemorated the World Tuberculosis Day 2016 at Kyenjojo Secondary School grounds in Kyenjojo District under the theme “Unite to End TB” with the Slogan “Find, Treat and cure all TB patients”. The overarching message to all Ugandans was to ensure that TB patients seek and complete treatment given to them by health workers.

The Ethiopia Ministry of Health planned to conduct a Measles vaccination in a next few weeks in a high risk woredas of Oromia, Amhara, Afar, Somali, Tigray, SNNPR, Harari, Gambella and Benishangul Gumuz regions and Dire Dawa City Administration. The campaign aimed to respond to the measles outbreaks occurred in some localities of the country.

The national level command post decided to integrate measles campaign with the last polio NID with tOPV before the switch to bOPV to use the advantage of operational cost of polio budget and the preparatory activities are underway.

Ethiopia successfully responded to the Meningitis C outbreak in Gambella, one of the nine national regional states of Ethiopia located in the western part of the country. The outbreak has begun in October 2015 and it has come to an end after 6 - 7 weeks (October 18-Dec, 2015). A total of 13 suspected meningitis cases were detected and of these four cases were found to be confirmed meningococcal meningitis sero-group C cases, from Itang special woredas, kule refugee camp where all affected groups were above five years.

Lusaka, 29th March 2016 - Zambia joined the rest of the international community to commemorate World TB Day under the theme “Unite to end TB.” The official launch of the commemorative activities took place in Ndola district on the copperbelt province on 23rd March 2016. The Deputy Minister of Health, Dr. Chitalu Chilufya was the Guest of Honour. In his statement to mark the World TB Day, Dr. Chilufya said that Zamia had a high TB burden of 638 per 100,000 population as indicated in the national TB prevalence survey of 2014.

Immunization advocates were part of the first ever Ministerial Conference on Immunization in Africa (MCIA) that brought many people together including leaders, health and Finance Ministers, technical experts, policymakers, donors and medias.  This article will presents you the voice of few advocates, who have been participated on MCIA, and showed their dedication, commitment and energy to continue promoting immunization in Africa.

The civil society organizations (CSOs) met in Addis for a full day meeting on 23rd of February, 2016 to discuss their role in holding governments accountable to improve vaccine access and coverage in Africa in line with the Global Vaccine Action Plan. Key conclusions from the meeting as well as the CSOs’ declaration on immunization presented at the Ministerial Conference on Immunization in Africa (MCIA). So far as of march 2016, over 80 organizations endorsed the CSOs’ declaration on immunization to show their commitment to these goals.  

Maiduguri, 23 March 2016 - The Governors of the three (3) security compromised states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe in the north east zone have reaffirmed their commitment to building resilience towards certification of  polio eradication in 2017 and beyond, through conscious efforts of strengthening routine immunization (RI) and investing more resources towards  the delivery of primary healthcare.