Public health in Zambia — hospitals and clinics, disease and outbreaks, medicines, and the Ministry of Health.
Washington warned Zambia it must grant American firms expanded minerals access or lose remaining US support for an HIV programme that underpins treatment for about 1.3 million people, with a reported 30 April 2026 deadline as services contracted.
Zambia logged 987 cumulative cholera cases and 16 deaths from 1 January to 10 May 2026, roughly double the 2025 burden, with Northern Province the epicentre and an oral cholera vaccine response under way.
Washington is phasing out the roughly $400 million a year it gives South Africa for HIV through PEPFAR — a withdrawal modelling suggests could cause up to 295,000 extra infections, and a warning for other aid-reliant African countries including Zambia.
Tuberculosis killed 1.23 million people in 2024 and Zambia carries one of the world’s heaviest burdens — just as the foreign aid that props up TB and HIV care across southern Africa is being pulled back.
Seven Ebola patients have recovered in the DR Congo, but viral misinformation claiming the outbreak is a hoax is undermining the response as cases climb to 837 with 196 deaths.
DR Congo has confirmed 782 Ebola cases and 178 deaths as the outbreak reaches two more health zones, keeping Zambia’s northern border on watch amid a WHO high-risk rating for neighbours.
The DRC says confirmed Ebola cases have risen to 598 with 115 deaths across three eastern provinces, a Bundibugyo-strain outbreak with no approved treatment that puts neighbours, including Zambia, on watch at the border.
Three Ebola vaccine candidates are in development for the Bundibugyo strain driving the DRC outbreak that has reached Uganda, with Zambia screening at its northern border.
At a US anniversary event in Lusaka, Secretary to the Cabinet Patrick Kangwa thanked Washington for a five-year, $1.5 billion health package for HIV, TB and malaria; Information PS Thabo Kawana then clarified the deal is not yet signed. The correction is small, but with US funds underwriting core disease programmes through PEPFAR, the distinction between a welcome and a signature matters.
Zambia faces a dual squeeze: rising debt service and falling donor health funding. Health taxes on tobacco, alcohol and sugary drinks offer a double dividend — more domestic revenue and fewer non-communicable diseases — but the design choices and enforcement decide how much of the promise lands.
President Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND administration have pledged to recruit more than 40,000 additional health workers in a second term if re-elected on 13 August — a promise that turns on the public-sector wage bill.
Nearly a year after it began in Mpulungu, Zambia's cholera outbreak is contained but persistent, centred on Northern Province. The response leans on oral vaccine and clean water.
Zambia's malaria cases fell to an estimated 9.5 million in 2024 from 11.5 million in 2023, with deaths down 40%, according to Ministry of Health data — even as the country battles a separate cholera outbreak.
The World Health Organization reported 906 suspected Ebola cases and 223 suspected deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an escalation of the Bundibugyo outbreak now pressing on Zambia's northern border and Copperbelt cross-border trade.
The World Health Organization declared the Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in DRC and Uganda a global health emergency on 17 May, with 80 deaths reported and no licensed vaccine for the strain. Zambia is now screening arrivals at Kasumbalesa, Kashiba, Mokambo, Jimbe and Chembe — the five border posts that handle most road traffic with the DRC, including the copper and cobalt that move down the North-South corridor.
Zambia has activated its Ebola response centres as the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo worsens, with the death toll in eastern Congo rising and the World Health Organization warning the virus may be spreading faster than first thought. Zambia does not share a border with the affected Ituri region, but the cross-border traffic through the copper corridor makes preparedness, not panic, the correct posture. Here is what activation means and why it matters.
Health is Kwacha News' coverage of public health in Zambia — the hospitals and clinics that deliver care, the disease burden the country carries, the medicines and money that reach the system, and the Ministry of Health and the institutions around it. The section follows outbreaks and the response to them — cholera, malaria, measles and the rest — alongside the slower stories of HIV and tuberculosis, maternal and child health, nutrition, mental health, and the financing that decides whether a clinic has drugs on the shelf. The reporting reads health as both a human story and a system: what the data shows, where the gaps are, and how decisions in Lusaka reach a patient in a district hospital.
Politics
Zambian government, policy and governance — the decisions that set the rules for everything else.
Local
Zambia close to home — the provinces, cities and councils, local government, service delivery and the civic stories that shape daily life.
Africa/World
Southern Africa, the continent and the wider world — regional trade, the AfCFTA, and the global context behind the domestic story.
