The Ebola outbreak in West Africa underlined the urgent need for integration of public health systems, including the establishment of national laboratory networks, surveillance systems, and health research institutions at all levels of service delivery. The integration schema presented here would assist in driving the immediate steps needed for integration of public health systems, particularly...

BACKGROUND The public health and socio-economic burden of Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT) in East Africa is not well documented. Understanding the epidemiology and impact of HAT in such settings is difficult due to a lack of robust surveillance and reporting systems, restricting evidence-based policy development and contributing to the continued neglect of this disease. OBJECTIVE To inves...

There is a growing international consensus that African health systems need to improve, but no agreement on how to accomplish this. From the perspective of modern quality improvement (QI), a central issue for low performance in these health systems is the relative neglect of health-care processes. Both health system leaders and international donors have focused their efforts elsewhere, producin...

Health information systems represent a key component of national health systems. However, the capabilities for leveraging information for improved health are limited and unevenly distributed in the World Health Organization (WHO) African Region. Improving such capabilities has been identified as a key priority for the success of reforms of national health systems through primary healthcare and ...

Although the proportion of elderly people in African populations is much smaller than that in developed countries, the absolute numbers of older Africans are rapidly increasing. The huge majority of Africans live in poor economic circumstances and few countries are able to offer social assistance programs. The health and wellbeing of older persons largely depend on the integral existence of inf...

BACKGROUND A functional national health research system (NHRS) is crucial in strengthening a country's health system to promote, restore and maintain the health status of its population. Progress towards the goal of universal health coverage in the post-2015 sustainable development agenda will be difficult for African countries without strengthening of their NHRS to yield the required evidence ...

One Health evolved from the recognition that an interdisciplinary approach is required to understand complex health problems, and that the health of humans and animals are inextricably linked. Through closer cooperation between the human, veterinary and environmental health sectors, added value, in terms of health metrics, cost savings and environmental services is achievable. Although the One ...

A pilot survey was conducted in 2 districts in Mozambique to determine the most important health problems facing smallholder pig producers. While African swine fever is the most serious disease that affects pigs at all levels of production in Mozambique, it is likely that productivity is reduced by the presence of mange and gastrointestinal parasites, while in traditional systems the conditions...