COVID-19 vaccination at a nomad encampment in Chad. ©WHOContributor support is empowering WHO to lead lifesaving work across Africa, while helping country health systems grow stronger to face threats to health and wellbeing.At this year’s World Health Assembly, WHO and the Africa Centres for Disease Control launched a five-year plan to detect, monitor and swiftly respond to disease outbreaks.
At the same event, African governments, WHO, and Amref Health Africa announced an initiative to strengthen national health systems to withstand natural disasters and other effects of climate change.Progress is showing on many other fronts: In Kenya, farmers are finding prosperity while switching from harmful tobacco crops to healthy food crops.
In Rwanda, new malaria-control initiatives reduced deaths from the disease nearly 90% between 2016 and 2022. In Chad, a few months of intensive outreach brought COVID-19 vaccination to more than half the country’s population, including hard-to-reach groups."This is the first time I have been approached for the COVID-19 vaccine,” said Halima Abdrahim, a 60-year-old nomad reached by a mobile clinic team in Chad. “When I was told about its benefits, I agreed to take it.”Read on for stories of Africa’s largest polio vaccination campaign since 2020, debunking health misinformation in Ghana, and more news from Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Malawi.In Chad, mobile clinics bring COVID-19 vaccination to vulnerable groupsNewly vaccinated in Chad. ©WHOEuropean Union support has helped Chad deploy mobile teams to vaccinate hard-to-reach communities of nomads, internally displaced people and refugees, and boost the country’s COVID-19 vaccination coverage rates from 1% to 56% in the space of