Health care in Africa : 2015 outlook

2015 began over a month ago with high hopes for a better year. Things are looking up and it seems the much wanted change as it pertains to health is being seen albeit slowly. Ecowas recently began a program which would facilitate the registration of drugs produced in the region. This will reduce the length of time it takes for new drugs to be made available to the people and further encourage drug production in the sub region. On Monday 2nd of February 2015 the Nigerian health workers under the auspices of Joint health sector union called off their strike that began in November 2014. This was said to have followed a meeting with President Good Luck Jonathan who promised that the issues surrounding welfare of health care workers will be looked into. 660000 people have been said to die yearly from malaria and 90 percent of this population is from Africa (WHO). In view of this burden the Tanzanian government in collaboration with Sanaria Inc a US company have been working on a method that could enhance quicker testing of new malaria drugs and vaccines, A breakthrough was attained recently, frozen sporozites of plasmodium falciparum (malaria causing organism)can now be safely injected into subjects in controlled environments. These subjects can then be used to test potential vaccines and drugs for malaria. We hope that this breakthrough heralds a reduction in the disease burden for malaria. These are just a few of the recent happenings in 2015. And it seems we are starting the year on the right path. Hopefully the Ebola vaccine trials will be successful and maybe then we would be able to focus on other pressing issues like hunger eradication,prohibition of child labour and putting measures in place to reduce the occurrence of feto maternal deaths.