The Quality of Health Care in Sub-Sahara Africa: How Bad is It?
The Sub-Sahara countries in Africa are most of the countries south of the Sahara, which is most of Africa. These countries are considered extremely rural with little or no power generation to the sparse communities, making health care a luxury often unheard of or not even thought about. Much of the culture is steeped in ancient rituals and tradition and are non believers in modern medicine and general health care. Of course the larger the settlement the better the chances of receiving any health care at all are but generally it is not something which people seek out for themselves.
It was only in 1987 that a world conference was held to create some form of health care service provisions to the population. The development of aids in these countries exploded, bringing with it a worldwide knowledge of the deprivation of basic health care services including education for the prevention and spreading of such diseases as HIV/Aids. Despite their efforts, many governments have experienced tremendous opposition and barriers to the efforts aimed at these causes.
To put the plight of Sub-Sahara Africa's health care into perspective one only needs to consider that for every 1000 people there are only 2.5 health care workers available to them. Add to that fact that this relatively small workforce is dealing with up to 25% of the worlds total disease. Aside from the fact the the region lives in extreme poverty, one of the bigger problems is educating, training and most importantly retaining doctors to practice in the areas in need.
Community education is absolutely vital in these countries as are the mobile labs which can travel from one rural area to the next and inoculate, educate and treat for the many diseases which run rampant through communities. Malaria is also a culprit in the death toll of Sub-Saharan Africans. Worldwide efforts have made a great impact in distributing mosquito nets and interior sprays and yet the death rate due to malaria infested mosquitoes in these countries is unrivaled in any other part of the world. When whole communities can be educated and brought to understand the causes and cures of the disease, success in decreasing the number of fatalities is evident but there is a very long way to go in this direction.
Tuberculosis has become prevalent in these countries in part due to high exposure to other diseases such as HIV which break down the immunity system. About 80% of tested subjects in African countries will be a positive for tuberculosis in contrast to the 5-10% in North America. Great strides are being taken to take care of Sub Saharan health care deficits and the battle cannot slow if annihilation is ever to be achieved against these horrific situations. In lending to the efforts being made, volunteers and missionaries and doctors have all been educating and distributing the necessary literature to millions of African citizens so that they might start to experience an more safe and healthy style of living.