Africa’s epidemiologic transition of dual burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the status of communicable and non-communicable diseases in Africa. It offers an overview of existing measures and assesses their robustness and application to an LMIC context. The book employs the disease ecology framework to understand the factors that led to the Ebola outbreak starting in February of 2014 in West Africa. It identifies political instability, the mining industry, deforestation and climate change, and the cultural context as the key human activities that led to the rapid proliferation of the Ebola epidemic in the most affected countries. The book examines the concordance between physician diagnosis of malaria and mothers' identified symptoms with mothers' perceptions of children's illness. It encourages policymakers and practitioners in Uganda to take a multi-sector approach in order to strengthen health information systems used to track NCD risk.