The Health Burden of Infectious Diseases in Africa

Abstract

Introduction: Infectious diseases are wide ranges of diseases that have constantly hazard the public health of both the human and animal population. Despite the successful fight against these types of diseases in many advanced countries, such milestone success cannot still be said of the African continent which accounted for a huge global burden of these diseases. Method: A review of health assessment study conducted by health organizations such as WHO, USAIDS and other published articles. Results: The African continent still fell short of aggressively combating the incidences and prevalence of infectious diseases despite some successes especially in the fight against HIV. Problems still attributed to the fight of infectious diseases on the continent include factors such as poverty, corruption and poor data keeping. Conclusions: The continent still heavily depends on foreign partners to fight the rage of infectious diseases on the continent. However, the governments in Africa need to rise up to this challenge by facilitating local contextual approach to the fight against these diseases such as funding local researchers and higher educational research institutes. Also, partnership with international bodies should be strengthened and funds receive from such partners should not be embezzled, but judiciously use for the purpose of receiving such aids. Timely data collection should be effectively institutionalized in order to monitor and evaluate milestone achievements.