Access to Education & Health Care
Health care in sub-Saharan Africa remains the worst in the world, with few countries able to spend the $34 to $40 a year per person that the World Health Organization ( WHO) considers the minimum for basic health care. More than 90% of the estimated 300-500 million malaria cases that occur worldwide every year are in Africans, mainly in children under five years of age ( WHO). In 2015 for instance, an estimated 1.6 million Africans died of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV-related illnesses ( Africa Renewal). These diseases can be prevented or treated with timely access to appropriate and affordable medicines, vaccines and other health services. In many areas, the people lack access to basic healthcare , leaving them vulnerable to death from simple illnesses that could be cured.
Unfortunately, wide spread poverty across the continent has made most Africans susceptible to killer diseases due to lack of access to medicines and other health care services. Quoting from Dave Puo, Mpumalango ( South Africa)," when you seek medical attention, you are often informed that there is no medication and advised to go to the big hospitals," which the majority of the people cannot afford. For four years now, Cameroon's Southwest and Northwest regions have been rocked by serious arm violence between government forces and non-state government armed groups, which has displaced more than 700,000 people. The crisis has severely affected the public health care system and to make it worse, violence and insecurity are hindering the supply of drugs and medical equipment. Between 1990 to 2000, the number of people with hypertension in Africa increased from 54.6 million to 92.3 million ( bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com). It is projected to rise to 216.8 million by 2030. The number of stillbirths in sub-Saharan Africa increased from 0.77 million in the year 2000 to 0.82 million in 2019( UNICEF). This is to further affirm the fact that lack of access to health care and inadequate health care facilities remain a persistent condition for most African indigenes.
The Education Sector is also one important sector that is facing an emergency in Africa. Every Child has the right to access safe, quality education. This trend is however not evident in the African continent. Many children miss out on school because their families can't afford the school fees. Africa's education crisis demands urgent attention. Millions of children are out of school, meanwhile, many of the children in school are receiving an education of such poor quality that they are learning very little. All too often, children who are born poor or in rural or conflict-affected regions, face extreme disadvantage in education. The World Bank's mission is for all children and youths to be learning and acquiring the skills they need to be productive, fulfilled and involved citizens and workers. This vision is however far-fetched in Africa. In Nigeria for instance, there is a persistent increase in the percentage of school dropouts. Most of the researches on the causes of dropout in Nigeria isolated poor educational background of parents, inability of parents to pay their children's school fees, very poor state of facilities in most schools, among others( files.eric.ed.gov).
Of all regions, Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of education exclusion. Over 1/5 of children between the ages of about 6 and 11 are out of school, followed by 1/3 of youths between the ages of about 12 and 14. Without urgent action, the situation might likely get worse as the region faces a rising demand for education due to still-growing school-age population ( UNESCO). Current researches have proven that most, if not all African countries might not meet up with the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals ( SDGs 4), which laid down 7 main objectives for education by 2030.
Having assessed the health and education crises in Africa, ACEF is initiating different workable programs across the continent to help solve these threatening crises. We aim to provide medical equipment to rural health centres. We realized that in rural areas where the people are opportune to have a health care unit, there are often inadequate medical equipment and most times the structure hosting the facility is dilapidated, which is why ACEF also have a mission to massively renovate rural health centres across Africa. Also, most medical personnel refuse to practice in rural communities in favour of big cities. This tend to leave villages with hospital buildings without healthcare workers. ACEF aim to provide scholarship to indigenes of remote villages to be trained as healthcare workers so that they can return to serve their local communities.
In order to boost the education sector, we provide scholarships to brilliant children, as well as to those whose parents cannot afford to pay school fees due to poverty . We also provide incentives to non-government teachers (PTA Teachers) whose salaries in most cases are not sufficient enough to sustain them for a month. We also provide teaching and learning materials to rural schools because one thing is to be in school, and another thing to be learning . Most of these schools don't have modern structures and learning equipment so we have taken upon ourselves the responsibilities of modernizing school buildings and providing them with computers, books and other relevant materials. ACEF is truly committed to changing the lives of vulnerable families in Africa. We believe that Africa can overcome its challenges if we all try to take action. Support us to solve the education and health crises in Africa.