Why African governments must invest in health

Health is more than the absence of disease: adequate nutrition is a critical part of the equation.

When faced with a crisis, our natural reaction is to deal with the immediate threat. A woman, let’s call her Ateka, came to the make-shift clinic with profuse diarrhoea. The urgent concern in the midst of a humanitarian crisis we were handling was to treat the infection and send her home as quickly as possible.