The Importance Of Traditional Medicine In Africa

In the United States, there are the privileges of incredible doctors, medicine, insurance, and many other resources that help the society stay healthy and prevent disease. Disease and sickness can be detrimental to a society. For example, something as simple as getting a flu shot saves lives around the world every year. In the Congo, vaccines are lucky to come by and are extremely valued. When people in a society are prone to disease, this affects how effective the society can be as a whole. Furthermore, this starts from the youth. The youth in the Congo are deprived of basic health requirements, causing the Congo to be an ineffective and war torn society.

Poverty is the biggest problem of all in Africa. In addition, it is limiting the blood supply in Africa. Next, because of low blood supply they are not able to help people with the AIDS disease.

One of the top ten problems there is endless conflict, and things there always seem to result in death. There are constant acts of violence, deaths from various diseases such as Ebola, and numerous other issues. There was an attack in early 2015 that left over 2,000 people in a village named Doron Baga dead. No one seemed to care much about this. In fact, in a map that displays the most locations facing violence in Africa, it shows Nigeria as the most, at 11,529 people. Another graph shows that as the years go on, so do the number of deaths from political violence, and it isn’t even referring to Darfur. While, yes, what’s going on is a tragedy, there are also many other terrible events occurring in Africa as

Countries like Rwanda are in intensely bad shape, and most all African countries have some form of an epidemic of disease, poverty, or malnutrition.

without the funds necessary to supply medical help, disease in Africa is exponential , much

The poor areas have many less doctors than the wealthy spots, even though the rural areas suffer from much harsher diseases on a larger scale. The countries either provide medical training for their own citizens or fund their training from somewhere else, but once the students have the skills to save lives, they move to different places for higher pay. This issue lies not only in South Africa, but in the entire continent. For example, for every Liberian doctor working in Liberia, there are two working abroad. Not only is there a shortage of doctors in general (averaging about 1.15 doctors for every 1,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa) but a shortage of nurses and midwives. Over two-thirds of mothers in Africa have no health professionals to guide them through hardships regarding pregnancy and childbirth, causing Africa alone to be responsible for over one half of the world’s infant and maternal

UNICEF officer, Suzanne Mary Beukes provided a clearer insight to how poor the country of Guinea is when she wrote, "The world has virtually quarantined a country in which 43 percent of people were already living on less than $1.25 a day prior to this health crisis” (Gholipour, 2014). The countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone (the countries where outbreaks primarily occurred), are some of the poorest countries in the world as a result of their recent civil war and the damaged health and education infrastructures that followed. (“Factors that Contributed to the Spread of Ebola,” n.d., para. 10). The poor infrastructures led to the delayed transportation of patients and lab work to labs and hospitals in addition to the lack of communication between health facilities. In addition to the lack of health facilities, there was shortage of healthcare workers. “Prior to the outbreaks, the three countries (Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone) had a ratio of only one to two doctors per nearly 100,000 population” (“Factors that Contributed to the Spread of Ebola,” n.d., para. 15). The poverty in these cities and countries lead people to want to move to a better standard of living, be treated for the virus, and look for food &

In recent years, Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone have launched major healthcare initiatives in order to expand and improve access to services. However, the state of health systems for the last 20 years is difficult to overcome. Liberia and Sierra Leone were each embroiled in civil wars until the mid-2000s. Porous borders and a shared diamond belt meant that their conflicts were often shared, as political strife, violence, looting, armed forces, and refugees moved to neighboring countries. , Guinea in particular was on the receiving end of refugees. During that time in all three countries, health systems were uniformly poor, with under-staffed and under-resourced facilities, significant health disparities, and almost no systematic infectious disease surveillance or control.

The Liberian Government, through the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MoHSW), the caretaker of the nation’s health services and advocate for children’s health and welfare has prioritized improving its health sector. However, the colossal task of bringing the health system back to pre-civil war years has become a formidable challenge. Besides, the limitation of services to both the rural and urban poor, the health system lacks trained medical personnel, including technicians, nurses and doctors (Bertelsmann Stiftung, BTI. 2016).

The residents of Africa are suffering from preventable, treatable, and fatal diseases everyday at a higher rate compared to developed countries. The healthcare crisis in Africa is the primary cause of all these deaths, and includes inefficient healthcare systems. Consequently, African's inefficient healthcare systems results in poor delivery of care and a shortage of health professionals. The healthcare crisis in Africa is a current issue impacting the lives of many African's who don't have the same access to resources as developed countries such as the United States. These resources can save the lives of many African's dying of preventable and curable disease, and understanding why the African continent has little access to them

Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries ranked 149th in 2014 but is experiencing rapid growth (World Bank, 2015). According to World Population Review (2015), 42% of Sierra Leone’s population is under the age of 15. The Republic of Sierra Leone struggles with the burden of infectious diseases, maternal, neonatal and nutritional issues, HIV, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (World Health Organization, 2015). Sierra Leone is focusing on improving health care access and affordability of care. Since the majority of health related problems in Sierra Leone are related to access of care, sanitation, and water supply, the focus should be at the national level to improve these aspects and increase life expectancy and health life

I was born in Monrovia, Liberia. Liberia is a country on the west coast of Africa that had endured a civil war from 1989 -2005. Liberia infrastructures are in ruins because of the civil war. Mostly, Importantly the Liberian medical infrastructure is non-existent. Liberia has only one medical school, and there are only 173 doctors in Liberia, a country with about 2.8 million citizens. Liberia medical infrastructure put to the test during the Ebola outbreak of 2014. The world watched as the Liberian medical apparatus collapse under its own weight. For example, there weren't enough medical facilities to facilitate Ebola patients. The Liberian government shut down schools, so they could be just as makeshift clinics. An estimated 5000 Liberians

The country's development is limited and is generally restricted to the capital city. The recent outbreak of the disease Ebola clearly demonstrated the lack of health and resources. Ebola, though contagious, can be easily contained by the sufficient sanitation and health resources. There were 13 250 cases of Ebola reported with 3 949 deaths. In Sierra Leone, there is no proper hospital outside the capital city and 136 doctors for the entire population. The low level of development in Sierra Leone was only worsened by the Ebola outbreak and restricted any improvements that the country may have made after the civil war.

Although volunteers for Medecins Sans Frontiers are commonly stationed in various countries with a dire healthcare worker shortage, regions with refugee camps and internally displaced persons are also a focus for this organization. Refugees and internally displaced persons often come from war torn regions and live in close confines with poor sanitation and limited resources. These living situations become a breeding ground for diseases and other health issues like malnutrition, yet the individuals lack access to any sort of healthcare. The organization also responds quickly when regions suddenly experience an increased need for healthcare, for example in times of an epidemic or a natural disaster. Medecins Sans Frontiers’ involvement across its varying regions and their attempt to address a broad spectrum of healthcare truly show how altruistic the organization is to individuals regardless of race, gender, or religion.

Medical knowledge is less than adequate in these societies, leading to much illness and a very high death rate. The infant mortality rate is overwhelmingly high, which is a reason for the high birth rates. Many infants do not make it through their first year of life before they get deathly ill - most of them do eventually die from their illness. The medical technology of modern society is so expensive to third world countries, making it extremely difficult for their society to stay healthy. Life expectancy is about 40-45 years in traditional societies.