Addressing the roots of health—education, equity, and opportunity—for a stronger Africa.
About 80% of healthcare is provided at the primary level – seeing a doctor or nurse in a health clinic, or in a village outreach, or over the phone. It is crucial that this is accessible to everyone.
Yet, 80% of what makes up someone’s health is determined by what happens outside of the hospital and health clinic. Around half of this is due to wealth, gender, income, job status, or family support. Other factors are due to health behaviours like smoking, drinking alcohol, diet and exercise. Or, access to quality healthcare, education, and cleanliness of your environment eg how polluted is the air you breathe. These are the social determinants of health—the missing link between clinical care and stronger health systems.
>1/5
Of children aged 6-11 are out of school.
Of young women in sub-Saharan Africa complete secondary education.
3/4
Of the population in East Africa cannot afford a healthy diet.
Hear more from our CEO Dr Githinji Gitahi
What is Amref doing to help?
Amref exists to bring about lasting health change in Africa. To realise this vision, and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 3 – Good Health and Wellbeing, we invest in building systems that deliver primary healthcare and address the social determinants of health.
Our approach sees a person, and a community, in the context of their everyday life including all their different roles and relationships. In this way, we can fully respond to their health needs and challenges.
Clean cooking fuel, sustainable livelihoods, reducing pollution, decreasing disease.
In Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, we helped to set up and train community waste-gathering groups on briquette-making. These emit 66% less smoke and save trees being felled to make charcoal, protecting the natural environment. Cleaning up the streets reduced cholera cases in one community by 80% over two years. And it increased women and youth employment by 60%. The project is now entirely community-run and self-sustaining.
The One Health approach recognises that human, animal and environmental health are all connected. One Health activities integrate all three of these elements to address health challenges in our programmes. We are also working at the regional and global level to ensure health is central to the climate discussion.
We include entrepreneurship training in our programmes to help vulnerable people build new livelihoods to support themselves when they are set back by health issues.
This training is particularly impactful for vulnerable women. These include fistula survivors who were shunned from their communities or teenage mothers forced to drop out of school. In Dar-es-Salaam integrating entrepreneurship training helped waste-collecting women make and sell other products from plastic, growing their average income by 198%. Livelihoods help them to support themselves, regain a sense of dignity and respect, and contribute to family income and wellbeing.
Reaching the last mile on chronic disease care
Amref’s mobile clinics are bringing vaccines and vital health services to people in communities with no access to care.
Initially engaged in Amref’s COVID-19 vaccination efforts, they are now the frontline for tackling another major health challenge in Kenya: the rise of chronic health conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, and cancer.
Cases of Type 2 diabetes in sub-Saharan Africa have increased by 490% between 1980 and 2021. Without effective interventions, by 2045 there is projected to be 54·9m people living with Type 2 diabetes in the region.
Currently, in some regions in Africa, only 5-10% of people living with diabetes are getting the treatment they need.
Amref’s mobile clinics are bringing health workers, information and tools that can prevent, detect and treat diabetes and other non-communicable diseases to people for whom other health services are sometimes a day’s journey away.
Header image: A portrait of Judith Kinunde a member of the Sanitation Club of St.Peter and Paul Primary School, Bunyangabu District, Western Uganda. The sanitation club’s role is to educate fellow pupils about hygiene and sanitation within the school. © Amref Health Africa / Ambrose Watanda
