USAID Africa Health Status Update

Child mortality in Africa has dropped by nearly a third over the last 20 years. The number of people newly infected with HIV infections is decreasing, in large part due to improvements in knowledge and preventative practices. In the last decade, 10 African countries, including Rwanda, South Africa, and Zambia, have more than halved the number of cases and deaths from malaria.
But even as life-saving technologies are introduced and disseminated throughout Africa, Africans continue to succumb to diseases and experience malnutrition at unacceptably high rates. More than 22 million people are infected with HIV/AIDS, most of them women. Tuberculosis, malaria, and other infectious diseases continue to spread through families and communities despite the existence of low-cost treatment and prevention measures. Poor nutrition and inadequate access to clean water increase the risk of disease and death, especially for children who are most vulnerable. Women die in childbirth at an alarming rate and have trouble accessing family planning, and pre- and post-natal services.

With support from the U.S. Government’s Global Health Initiative, African countries are making their health systems more effective and efficient. U.S. assistance places a strong emphasis on integrating service delivery systems and improving the education and training of health providers. USAID programs improve the physical infrastructure of facilities, help to build health information systems, and train the national managers and leaders who are so critical in assuring the long-term viability of the health sector.
As a result of the U.S. commitment to health in Africa, more children are living to see their first birthday, fewer people are dying from curable diseases like malaria and tuberculosis, and more communities have access to safe drinking water.

• Malaria is a major cause of child deaths in Africa, and of the seven President’s Malaria Initiative focus countries in Africa (Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, and Zambia) where data is available, death rates among children under five years have dropped between 23 and 36 percent. Since 2006 in these countries, the number of people protected by indoor spraying to kill mosquitoes increased from less than 3 million to more than 27 million. During the same period, the percentage of families owning at least one insecticide-treated bed net increased from less than 10 percent to greater than 50 percent.

• Child immunization rates in Africa have been sustained at over 70 percent since 2008. USAID has been a leader in promoting the “Reach Every District” approach to strengthen local planning while also helping to develop innovative financing systems to make vaccines more affordable.

• Great strides have been made in recent years to improve access to voluntary family planning, slowing unsustainable population growth and improving the health of both children and mothers in Africa. The most impressive increases in contraceptive prevalence have occurred in Ethiopia (13 to 29 percent in three years), Kenya (31 to 39 percent in five years), Madagascar (18 to 29 percent in five years), and Rwanda (10 to 27 percent in three years).

• Through the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), USAID and its partners have made significant progress in addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa. Two million Africans are now receiving life-saving treatment and another 10 million people living with HIV are receiving care through PEPFAR.

• Tropical diseases like river blindness and sleeping sickness-debilitating conditions that previously affected millions-have nearly disappeared in many African countries and have been drastically reduced in others.

Source: USAID