In March 2018, the World Bank http://www.worldbank.org approved $110 million to support the Government of Angola and their efforts to address the quality of health services in the country. The funding will fund the “Health System Performance Strengthening Project”.
The Project will benefit women of reproductive age and children under the age of five in 21 municipalities in seven provinces with 232 primary healthcare facilities to also be supported. The areas targeted for the new project will occur in provinces and municipalities representing 4.7 million people which represents 16.6 percent of the country’s total population.
The Project will support two innovations which will include developing a performance-based financing pilot to focus on delivering quality health services. In addition, the project will also fund a flexible emergency response component so the country will be able to rapidly respond to potential public health outbreaks.
Also, the U.S Navy Africa Command‘s Environmental Preventive Medicine Unit Seven (NEPMU-7) https://www.med.navy is supporting medical training for 48 military and military-affiliate participants who play an important role in Angola’s outbreak and disaster response efforts.
The medical training is focused on highly contagious hemorrhagic diseases such as Ebola, Marburg, Lassa fever, Rift Valley Fever, and Yellow fever. The training uses an all hazards approach that can be applied to any infectious disease outbreak and also helps during chemical or biological hazards.
Additionally, Angolan infectious disease specialists have actively trained U.S. and Serbian service members on endemic tropical diseases such as Malaria, Dengue, Leptospirosis, and Schistosomiasis. In addition, Angolan, Serbian, and U.S. providers have delivered medical care to the local population in two villages in Angola’s Bengo Province.
The training uses hands-on simulated scenarios to supplement presentations on topics that included national and global table-top planning, response, and mitigation concepts. Experts from USAID https://www.usaid.gov and CDC https://www.cdc.gov presented the information on these specialty topics.
At the conclusion of the training exercise, the nation’s military, police, and emergency response personnel simulated a large scale infectious disease outbreak and then demonstrated their response and containment plans for a hemorrhagic epidemic.
Lt. Cmdr. Jason Rice, Preventive Medicine Officer for NEPMU-7 reported, “The training was very successful which is important as the Armed Forces play a critical role in the national and regional control of these types of hemorrhagic diseases in this region.”