Africa’s Health System(s) Performance on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

Abstract

This chapter assesses the achievement of the eight MDS goals and their subsections by the countries that subscribed to them. The reader is reminded that this issue is still in progress and the following assessment relies mainly on the WHO annual reports, the series of comprehensive global articles written by a cadre of hundreds of experts and published in The Lancet over the past five years, and a few other sources. On Africa, the World Health Organization notes that, notwithstanding the problems, the African continent has made progress in its effort to achieve some of the MDGs. As many experts have said, the MDGs are a good way of moving and integrating Africa’s health systems into the advance developments of the twenty-first century. However, if one assesses carefully the efforts to achieve them, only three African countries—Burkina Faso, Mozambique, and Namibia—lead the way in accelerated progress in 16 of the 22 indicators assessed so far. Several countries in North, Southern, East, Central and West Africa, have also improved their rate of progress and are listed among the top 20 countries that have shown some progress in most health indicators. In North Africa, Egypt has progressed in 11 indicators, followed by Morocco in nine, and Tunisia in eight.