Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - Elimination of onchocerciasis and other neglected tropical diseases in Africa greatly depends on well-managed, resourced and stre n gthened national health systems, a senior official of the World Health Organisat i on (WHO) said here Tuesday.In addition, Fatumata Nafo-Traore, the WHO Representative in Ethiopia, said that the health systems should address health needs of communities that are empowere d to own, contribute and direct local interventions to prevent diseases.

Opening the fifth meeting of national onchocerciasis task forces of 16 African c ountries, Nafo-Traore noted that the African Programme for Onchocerciasis (APOC)

has played a significant role in building local capacities and implementing comm u nity directed initiatives.

The five-day technical meeting is looking into ways to extend the success of APO C in West African countries to the rest of the continent, where communities live

in poverty due to either river blindness or the burden of other neglected tropic a l diseases.

"Strengthening health systems is critical to all disease control programmes and achieving the Millennium Development Goals beyond health care delivery to the si c k," said Nafo-Traore.

In view of dwindling resources, overstretched health systems and workforce, she suggested that integration and co-implementation of selected health intervention s would help improve coverage, bring equity to health service delivery and ration a l use of scarce resources.

Nafo-Traore said that the WHO/APOC financial and technical assistance had enable d Ethiopia to achieve more than 65 percent therapeutic coverage with 'ivermectin ' and 100 percent geographic coverage of the meso- and hyper endemic areas by com m unity-directed interventions.

Despite the success in treatment coverage, training of drug distributors, commun ity mobilisation and health education in most of the project sites, she said tha t there was room for improvement in government financial contribution.

"The recent systemic approach to address community health needs in Ethiopia will certainly help foster effective, integrated and more sustainable solutions in t h e fight against river blindness and other diseases," she added.

This meeting follows the second APOC consultation here last week on integration and co-implementation of onchocerciasis control into African health systems.

Countries represented at this meeting include Cameroon, Chad, Central African Re public, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda .

From afriquenligne.fr