Margot Crandall

Public Health Trends

November 12, 2012

My hometown is Windhoek, Namibia.  So I am sure health trends in Africa are going to be very different than those here in the US.  I interviewed my good friend Thindi Shipanga who is head of Regional Health & 
Social Welfare Services.  These are the top 5 Public Health Trends:

HIV/AIDS She said the major problem in combating the HIV/AIDS is education.  Especially in rural areas people have so many misconceptions about how the disease is contracted and basically every other aspect of it. There are up to 11,000 deaths a year due to HIV/AIDS, and about 70,000 orphans.  They are currently trying to put together an education plan to reach everyone in the country so they can begin to really fight the problem.

Pneumonia is responsible for 11% of deaths. Again this is an underlying cause of death due to HIV/AIDS infections. People usually get pneumonia in their final stage of AIDS and for many this is what eventually kills them. 13.1% of adults have AIDS in Namibia, which is one of the highest rates in the continent.  So she says because of this statistic you can see why pneumonia is such a big deal in Namibia.

Malaria In southern Africa Malaria is second to HIV/Aids in causing illness and death. In Namibia, however, this applies primarily to the local population in the northern parts of the country.  A main problem is not being able to provide protection because it becomes too expensive in the long term because there are too many people at risk.  They have programs and foreign aid that distribute mosquito nets, but beyond that they cannot do a lot.

TB is also a major public health problem in Namibia.  One of the main reasons of the prevalence of TB is caused by the HIV epidemic. With a TB prevalence rate of 765 cases per 100,000, Namibia has one of the highest case notification rates in the world. The emergence of drug-resistant strains of the disease imposes additional challenges for infection control in health facilities. Another contributing factor of the high rate of TB in the country include overcrowding and poor ventilation, poor nutrition, alcoholism, inadequate infection control/prevention.

Diarrheal diseases Since Namibia is third world country sanitation and clean water is sometimes rare to come by. About half of the country does not have access to running water, and toilets.  She says that this is a major cause of death for the elderly and particularly the very young (5 years old and younger).  In 2008 there was even an outbreak of cholera. They are trying to teach children in schools about proper hand washing and sanitation.