Sunday, November 24African Digital Business Magazine

Tag: Africa Health

Vaccinations: Beyond Covid-19 Hesitancy
Medicine, South Africa News

Vaccinations: Beyond Covid-19 Hesitancy

What are the ethical, legal and human rights considerations in preparing for future pandemics and human disasters in Africa? Pandemics constitute major public health concerns that affect the entire population, causing widespread human suffering, often requiring population-scale behavioural change, and bringing in myriad new ethical, legal, and medical practice paradigms. The past two years have been a wake-up call for nations around the world to ensure that health systems are resilient and pandemic-prepared. Africa’s primary healthcare systems must be strengthened, and part of the solution lies in robust vaccination strategies, experts say[i]. As with many other disease outbreaks, COVID-19, saw the disadvantaged in our society bearing the brunt of the effects of the pandemic, highlighti...
Medicine, South Africa News

Vaccine production in Africa key to pandemic-proofing the Continent

The unprecedented speed of development of the Covid-19 vaccines can be attributed to multiple factors including record levels of international collaboration and swift action on the part of many governments and regulatory bodies to provide a conducive framework.    As every nation across the globe faced impending economic doom, massive cross-sector funding materialised, allowing large-scale phased trials to be performed in parallel (multiple phases run simultaneously).    The accumulation of knowledge from decades of study on related viruses, including research which started after the SARS outbreaks of 2002 -2004, and the advent of mRNA-based vaccine technology further assisted in ensuring a swift response to halting the spread of the deadly virus.   The potential for factors that ena...
Medicine

Tailor-made solutions needed to build resilient health systems in Africa

The Covid-19 pandemic has placed a severe strain on the health system in the world and many healthcare workers have been stretched far beyond their capacity. For most African countries, balancing a response to the pandemic with the challenges of providing universal health care has highlighted the need for resilient health systems that will address the imperatives of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and prompt novel, custom-made solutions for the continent and its people. While the collection and analysis of data across the region has enabled some of the continent’s success stories to be showcased, experts agree that the health system challenges faced by the region span over the financial, political and socio-economic spheres and that addressing them will take a multi-faceted and Afri...
Medicine, South Africa News

The Future of Work in Healthcare: five insights on how technology can help realise health equity

How can new digital ways of working in the healthcare sector improve outcomes for patients to increase global health equity in the COVID-19 era and beyond? And do we have reason to be optimistic? These were the questions tackled by a panel of globally recognised health-tech experts in a recent webinar for the African healthcare community. Hosted by BroadReach Group CEO Chris LeGrand, an internationally recognised leader in public health management, the webinar was joined by panelists Dr John Sargent, the World Economic Forum’s 2015 Social Entrepreneur of the Year, health technology innovator and co-founder of BroadReach, Dr Andrew Kambugu, Executive Director at the Infectious Diseases Institute at Makerere University in Uganda and Rochelle Mountany, a senior manager and health industry ad...