The lack of access to adequate medical resources and facilities have led to the significant number of deaths. Some of these deaths could have been avoided by timely access to a medical professional or close proximity of hospitals.
Health systems across Africa are underfunded and understaffed. Less than half of African citizens (52%) about 615 million people have access to the health care they need, the quality of health services across the continent is generally poor, and family planning needs of half the continent’s women and girls are unmet.
This is an analysis on healthcare data relating to deaths, causes of deaths, national healthcare expenditure, and distribution of medical doctors in Africa.
- 30.68% of the population in Africa are estimated to have been lost due to health issues which is higher than all other continents. It's worth nothing that South America and Oceania both have low deaths per population. Further research can be done to highlight why this is so and how this can be replicated in the top 3 continents. We'll focus on Africa for this analysis.
- Lesotho, Central African Republic and Eritrea are the worst performing countries in African with an estimated deaths per population of 3.51%, 3.03% and 2.88% respectively. Nigeria had the 20th position with 2.05% of its population dead due to health related uses. Libya, Algeria and Tunisia had the least % deaths per population with 0.7%, 0.87% and 1.03% respectively.
- For the period of 2000 to 2019, Cardiovascular diseases (15.86%) and HIV/AIDS (13.06%) have been responsible for most health related deaths in Africa. It is shocking to see Neonatal disorders accounts for 10.28% of the total deaths. The least causes of deaths are Drug use disorders, Parkinson's disease and Acute hepatitis which account for just 0.45% of the total deaths.
- Lesotho is a country known to be battling the HIV/AIDS epidemic which is fueled by behavioural, social and structural drivers and this explains its struggle to bring its contribution to deaths below 0.4%. Some of the factors that drive this include the prevalence of multiple sexual partnerships combined with unsafe sexual practices, the abuse and sexual exploitation of women, etc.
- More children and youths are dying compared to the older ones, as majority of the deaths in Africa, which is approximately 60%, occured in the 'Under 5 years' (34.58%) and '15-49 years' (24.55%) age groups.
- There is a lack of medical doctors all across Africa. Only Algeria, Mauritius and Seychelles have more than 10 doctors per 10,000 people. While a shocking 76.6% of African countries have below 2 doctors per 10,000 people.
- Sierra Leone has the highest health expenditure of 11.88% of GDP followed by Namibia which lags at 9.51%. Majority of the countries have their health expenditures below 7% with Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Benin, Angola and Gabon having below 3% health expenditure. Nigeria performs poorly with a health expenditure of 3.62%.
- It's worth noting that South America and Oceania both have low deaths per population. Further research can be done to highlight why this is so and how this can be replicated in the top 3 continents. We'll focus on Africa for this analysis.
- Special attention needs to placed on Postnatal care and Maternal care as neonatal disorders accounts for 10.28% of the total deaths.
- Sexual education, women empowerment and other governmental policies should be enforced in Lesotho and other countries struggling with HIV/AID.
- Child health care needs to be improved in Africa as approximately 60% of the deaths in Africa are made up mostly children and youths.
- Each African government needs to formulate policies that would favor their doctors by improving the quality of education, building relevant and well equipped health facilites, and increasing the pay for doctors, thereby hindering the outflux of African doctors.
- Governments need to allocate more resources towards the health sector.
- Government of Lesotho, Final Report for a Joint Review of HIV/Tuberculosis and Hepatitis programmes.
- Countries and territories certified malaria-free by WHO. (n.d.). https://www.who.int/teams/global-malaria-programme/elimination/countries-and-territories-certified-malaria-free-by-who