The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently awarded approximately $36.5 million over the next five years to promote junior faculty training in research careers at academic institutions in Africa.
This move is part of the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI), which started in 2010 and seeks to transform medical education in sub-Saharan Africa. The goal is to improve community-based training sites, upgrade curricula, and strengthen communications technology and e-learning resources.
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The next chapter of the global development agenda – the sustainable development goals – will shift the global focus and debate around health systems.
As the follow up to the millennium development goals, which were designed in 2000 as eight anti-poverty targets to be attained by the end of 2015, the sustainable development goals with their new targets will change how development in the global south is progressing. The goals are aimed at finishing what the millennium development goals started.
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Kenyan investors challenged to tap into Central Africa countries

Kenyan companies have been challenged to invest in the central African region to expand trade and cultural ties between the Eastern and Central African countries.
Kenya’s Ambassador to DR Congo, Republic of Congo, Gabon and Central African Republic, Dr George Masafu, said Equity Bank has, for instance, acquired majority shareholding in Pro Credit, one of the biggest banks in the region. “It will be the first Kenyan financial institution in DRC and it will help businessmen expand their interests in the region,” he said on the sidelines of the 11th All Africa Games, which ended in Brazzaville on Saturday.
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What do you do when over half of health sector spending is available to less than a fifth of the population? When only 16% have private health insurance and the 84% who do not are forced to turn to a public sector overstretched and understaffed?
The problems are manifold, the solutions never easy, but South Africa is on the brink of overhauling its health care system — and it’s a plan 70 years in the making.
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A Laser Medical Application Laboratory is to be set up in Ghana to serve as a centre for the training of medical professionals in West Africa.
The laboratory, which will be funded by development partners, will make use of laser technologies in the fields of urology, ophthalmology, dentistry and general surgery.
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There’s a lot of bad news in the world these days–conflict, terrorism, refugee flight, not to mention worries about natural disasters and the economy.
Sometimes, things can seem so hopeless.
But now and then you hear something that gives hope. That’s what I felt recently when I talked to a young woman from Calgary who is making surgery safer for patients in some of the world’s poorest countries.
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Varian Medical Systems is partnering with two universities in Africa to help cancer patients gain access to better, more modern, radiation treatments. The educational program, called “Access to Care”, began this week in Cape Town, South Africa, and is training caregivers to deliver advanced conformal radiotherapy treatments.
Advanced techniques like 3-D conformal radiotherapy are not widely available in many parts of Africa, said Jose-Manuel Valentim, director of Varian’s EMEIA (Europe, Middle East, India, Africa) and APAC (Asia-Pacific) divisions, to HCB News.
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Surplus medical equipment will move from Arbroath to Africa to help orphans in Malawi thanks to a council donation.
A consignment of specialist health gear and seating is bound for three centres in the African country to help in the treatment and support of disabled orphans.
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BEIJING, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) — As the world celebrates the 12th UN Day for South-South Cooperation on Saturday, it is notable that China’s aiding Africa in the past decades has become a paradigm of South-South cooperation.
Aiding Africa, which plays an important role in China’s Africa diplomacy, has become an impulse for the development of China-Africa relations, a strong bond linking both sides and a distinguishing feature of China-Africa ties.
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South Africa’s biggest health insurer Discovery Ltd reported a 14 percent rise in annual profit on Thursday, boosted by a near doubling of the number of people on its medical scheme.

Discovery, which also runs a life insurance business, said normalised diluted headline earnings per share totaled 663 cents in the year to the end of June compared with 580 cents a year earlier.
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