Medical Care in Africa

As I was looking up information on the health care in Africa many of the sites made me think about how Hawa's mother, Tenkamu, had to travel three days in order to see a doctor. Also how Hawa had to travel to the city to try and find a doctor who could reverse her tubes being tied.


A lot of the sites that I looked at talked about the medical care in Africa for U.S. citizens. In Senegal there are many hospitals and clinics in the capital of Dakar, however, the states of the hospitals do not meet the U.S. standards for hospitals. Also, they require you to pay your bills in cash and they will not allow you to leave the hospital until your bill has been paid in full and even sometimes will refuse you treatment unless you pay upfront. On the U.S. Embassy site for Senegal they have a list of doctors available for people to go to in order to get treatment, but just above it they have a disclaimer about the ability of the doctors! If this is how they treat U.S. citizens, meaning those who have money, I can only imagine how those who live in Africa are treated.


In Zimbabwe, the country's two largest hospitals are closed because the nurses and doctors are on strike or have just stopped working because the conditions they have been working in are horrible. A quote from the article said "They (the doctors) believe the conditions are unbearable for them to come to work and watch patients die" (allAfrica.com) Patients have been turned away and left to die at home because they are not being treated. This article was released on October 25, 2008.


In Mozambique there are only 7 ear, nose and throat specialists. Seven! In the whole country! There are also only 800 medical doctors for more than 20 million people. "That means there is one doctor for about 26,000 people. This figure compares with one doctor for 1,000 inhabitants in Europe and other developed countries" (allAfrica.com).






This link is to a website of current news articles about health in Africa:
http://allafrica.com/health/