Health in Liberia

  • WHO lauds Africa’s progress in malaria, HIV control

    BOTSWANA, 2017/07/29 The World Health Organisation (WHO), has commended the African region for making significant evolution in malaria control in the last five years. Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO Regional Director for Africa, in a statement in Abuja on Tuesday, said malaria incidence and mortality rates had declined by 42 % and 66 % respectively between 2000 and 2015. Moeti made the commendation in Kigali, Rwanda, while speaking at the Initial Africa Health Forum, launched by WHO, Africa and the Government of Rwanda.
  • WHO Africa Health Forum App Leads the Way

    BOTSWANA, 2017/07/16 You can meet the majority interesting people at conferences. If you can make your way through the sea of people to get to them. The initial Africa Health Forum organised by the World Health Organisation African region was no different - hundreds and hundreds of enthusiastic participants filling the Kigali Convention Centre in Rwanda, determined to find their way to universal healthcare (UHC) on the continent. The forum promised to examine WHO AFRO's vision for health and development across the continent, explore concrete ways for partners to contribute to the work of the organization, meet the challenges that young people face, and provide a platform to talk about innovative strategies for the public health challenges that Africa just can't seem to shake.
  • AIDS still number one cause of death in Africa

    BOTSWANA, 2016/07/20 The United Nations Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has disclosed that despite successes chalked in the fight against Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), a lot additional needed to be done particularly in Africa. UNICEF’s Executive Director, Anthony Lake, revealed that adolescents were generally dying of AIDS at an alarming rate and that the disease remained the leading cause of death in Africa.
  • Lessons learnt from Ebola

    GUINEA, 2016/01/15 It's been 42 days since Liberia's last Ebola patient tested negative. That means an end to the current Ebola crisis, at least for presently. The epidemic started in December 2013 and over 28,500 cases were recorded, with the epicenters in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. This was the biggest Ebola outbreak to date. This is what Ebola experts inclunding residents of three nations identified as the lessons learnt. The World Health Organization (WHO) has finally declared all of West Africa Ebola free. The two-year-long outbreak left 11,300 people dead and many children orphaned. So, did we learn something from it?
  • Awareness campaign on to prevent Ebola resurgence in Liberia

    LIBERIA, 2016/01/10 The Liberia Crusaders for Peace (LCP) with support from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Healthy Life have embarked on an initiative to prevent the recurrence and relapse of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in the country.The project code named ˜Dead Body Swabbing Ebola Prevention Program’ is aimed at creating massive awareness in seven of Liberia’s 15 counties on the need to abstain from tampering with dead bodies until the County Health Team completes medical diagnosis and finally declares dead bodies free of the Ebola virus. A press statement issued here Saturday quotes the Administrator of LCP, Madam Yah Bryant, as saying that her organization has recruited and trained 350 field communicators, mobilizers, monitors and supervisors; pointing out that 50 were selected from each of the seven counties inclunding Lofa, Montserrado, Margibi, Grand Bassa, Bong, Nimba and Grand Cape Mount counties for the project.
  • Global Malaria Target Met Amid Sharp Drop in Cases

    BOTSWANA, 2015/09/22 Malaria death rates have plunged by 60 % since 2000, but the ancient killer remains an acute public health problem with 15 nations mainly in sub-Saharan Africa accounting for some 80 % of cases and deaths globally, according to a new United Nations statement released today. “World malaria control is one of the great public health success stories of the completed 15 years,” said Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the UN World Health Organization (WHO). “It’s a sign that our strategies are on target, and that we can beat this ancient killer, which still claims hundreds of thousands of lives, mostly children, each year.”
  • UN Health Agency Warns Ebola Outbreak in West Africa Has 'A Very Nasty Sting in Its Tail'

    BENIN, 2015/09/13 The United Nations health agency's appropriate envoy on Ebola response today said the outbreak in West Africa has a "very nasty sting in its tail," but projected that the goal of zero transmission in the human people remains "very possible within 2015." Dr. Bruce Aylward, Appropriate Representative on Ebola Response for the World Health Organization (WHO), made those remarks at a press conference in Geneva, following his return from the "hot spots" of the epidemic in Guinea and Sierra Leone. He said that despite the "ferocious rainy season" in West Africa, the number of Ebola cases has remained in the single digits for six consecutive weeks in Guinea and Sierra Leone. In addition, there are only three active chains of transmission in those nations, a development he described as a "major milestone in all three nations [Liberia being the third] in the march towards zero" cases.
  • Liberia Ebola-Free Again

    LIBERIA, 2015/09/08 The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday declared Liberia Ebola-free next going 42 days without recording any confirmed case of the disease since the last case tested negative in a laboratory. Liberia presently enters a 90-day period of vigilance and surveillance to curb a possible resurgence. Barely two months following the end of a initial wave of Ebola, which killed some 4,800 people, the disease resurged on June 29 next the corpse of a 17-year-old boy tested positive at the Roberts International Airport highway community of Nedowein in Margibi County.
  • Ebola is an infectious and generally fatal disease.

    GUINEA, 2015/08/27 Ebola is an infectious and generally fatal disease. It's marked by fever and severe internal bleeding, spread through contact with infected body fluids. The nations of Sierra Leone and Guinea on Africa's West Coast have been particularly hard hit with about 4 000 people dying since the start of the outbreak a couple of years ago. The writer participated in the recent Writing for Social Change Workshop in Kampala - an annual event of The African Women's Development Fund (AWDF) in collaboration with FEMRITE, the Uganda Women Writers Association. Five years ago I was sexually assaulted and I call myself a survivor. I live in a country where this word survivor is thrown around like confetti. Just an extra term for world consumption. A euphemism for scars, underneath which lurks the pain of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak that hit Sierra Leone.
  • Ebola-Stricken Nations Need $700 Million to Rebuild Healthcare

    GUINEA, 2015/07/18 Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone need a further $696 million (£446.13 million) in donor funding to rebuild their battered health services over the next two years in the wake of the deadly Ebola epidemic, senior World Health Organization (WHO) officials said on Monday. WHO Assistant Director General for Health Systems and Innovation Marie-Paule Kieny said that donors had pledged $1.4 billion of an estimated $2.1 billion required by the three nations before December 2017. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will host an international Ebola recovery conference in New York on Friday to raise additional funds for reconstruction.