African health ministers at the Seventy-fifth session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa in Lusaka, Zambia, have endorsed a new framework aimed at accelerating progress in oral health across the continent. The initiative addresses the widespread prevalence of oral diseases affecting around 42% of the African population and sets ambitious targets, including providing at least 50% of each country’s population with essential oral health services, reducing major oral disease prevalence by 10%, and ensuring that 60% of countries have national oral health policies with dedicated budgets and staff by 2028. Additionally, it seeks to integrate noma management into national health strategies in 50% of noma-endemic countries.
WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr. Mohamed Yakub Janabi, emphasized that oral diseases have been largely neglected, making urgent, sustained, and coordinated action essential. The framework positions oral health as a critical component of universal health coverage, highlighting the need for adequate financing, workforce, and leadership to implement a people-centered approach. WHO and partners are supporting governments through advocacy, technical assistance, and training, including initiatives such as abolishing taxes on fluoride toothpaste in Mauritius and training over 14,000 health workers to detect and manage oral diseases at community and primary care levels. Fourteen countries are also leading efforts to secure WHO recognition of noma as a neglected tropical disease.
Senegal’s Minister of Health, Honourable Ibrahima Sy, welcomed the framework, highlighting the country’s commitment to combatting noma and other oral diseases through multisectoral collaboration with WHO support. The framework outlines five priority measures for countries: strengthening leadership and financing through partnerships, developing national oral health policies, integrating oral health into essential health service packages, closing workforce gaps through strategies like task-sharing, and enhancing access to essential medicines and disease surveillance.
Despite the urgency, investment in oral health remains extremely low in the region, with over 70% of countries spending less than US$1 per capita—far below the 2019 global average of US$50. Service delivery is heavily weighted toward costly curative care, with limited preventive measures such as fluoride toothpaste or silver diamine fluoride. Only four countries had national fluoride guidelines in 2023, and the oral health workforce is critically short at just 3.7 per 100,000 people compared to the estimated requirement of 13.3 per 100,000.
To implement the framework, African health ministers committed to boosting political commitment, providing technical leadership, mobilizing domestic and external resources, and allocating adequate human and logistical support, setting the stage for stronger oral health systems and improved access to essential services across the continent.
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