The high prevalence of neurological diseases is having a devastating impact on local communities in Africa.-based mental health charity."People are often taken to churches and prayed for or told they are possessed. Patients are oftenAround 50% of people who go to the emergency room in Africa have some sort of neurological complication, and neurological disease rates are often double those in higher-income regions.
"You might have a child who is more likely to be born in socioeconomically deprived settings where the mother might be HIV exposed. They might also have tuberculosis. And then you have all the access-to-care barriers," said Wilmshurst. Wilmshurst said things are improving. She's been working to build neurological medical services around Africa from the ground up, and part of that is training specialist doctors.
"We had one trainee who went back to Kenya, where they advocated and lobbied to get a vaccine rollout of rotavirus. We know that implementing rotavirus vaccination ... mortality rates from rotavirus complications plummeted. He saved a couple of million lives there," Wilmshurst said.Wangari-Jones said that to tackle the burden of neurological diseases, it's important that support programs integrate into local people's communities.
"People often come forward in these talks with their issues and incidents with family members. It's a way of reaching people in the local community and helping them access sources of health and social care," she said.
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