how to repopulate the African medical deserts? – Young Africa

A glaring lack of health professionals in hospitals where the equipment is often obsolete and which are, for a large part of the population, far too far geographically. Vaccination and prevention campaigns dragging on. Treatments often too expensive for the purses of patients and their relatives, to which must sometimes be added the bribes that some doctors demand to provide care…

Despite promises and announcements of investments in this crucial sector, health systems are still also failing over a large part of the continent. Worse, their condition is deteriorating in most countries. According to the survey carried out last July by Afrobarometer, six out of ten Africans believe that they have lacked medical care at least once in the past year.

Political will

The Covid-19 pandemic, which has shaken up already fragile health systems, has shed harsh light on these shortcomings, in a continent where health should nevertheless be at the very top of the priorities. With a very young population – the median age in Africa is 20 – very high poverty rates, a population that does not always have access to basic needs, the first effects of global warming that are being felt, the health challenge is as colossal as the political will to face it seems weak.

The consequences of this lack of investment are serious. Despite advances in medicine and prevention, malaria continues to wreak havoc in several parts of the continent. The The fight against HIV, while at the heart of many public and private initiatives, is still lagging behind. Infant mortality remains the highest in the world: one in thirteen children dies before reaching the age of five.

Economic consequences

The consequences are also economic. Dependence on medicines – especially vaccines – produced outside the continent weighs both symbolically but also, and above all, on the state budget. The Covid-19 pandemic has sufficiently demonstrated this. In addition, the difficulties of access to care, a factor of impoverishment, affect even more strongly the poorest section of the population.

Number of doctors per inhabitant, production and access to medicines, share of the budget allocated by States to the health sector, weight of medical expenditure in household finances… The deciphering, in infographics, of the main indicators makes it possible to understand the extent of the path that remains to be traveled. But solutions existent.

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