This book focuses on Africäs challenges, achievements, and failures over the past several centuries using an interdisciplinary approach that combines theory and fact and evidence-based practices and interventions in public health, and argues that most of the health problems in Africa are not a result of scarce or lack of resources, but of the misconceived and misplaced priorities that have left the continent behind every other on the globe in terms of health, education, and equitable distribution of opportunities and access to (quality) health as agreed by the United Nations member states at Alma-Ata in 1978.

Mario J. Azevedo is Professor and Chair of the Department of History and Philosophy and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Jackson State University, USA. He has served as Chair of the Africana Studies Department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Associate Dean of the School of Health Sciences, and Interim Dean of the College of Public Service at Jackson State University. Azevedo has published a number of articles and books on African History and Health. His most recent book, Health and the State of Health Care in Mississippi, was published in 2015.

.Chapter 1 The State of Health System(s) in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities.-.Chapter 2 Africa's Health Systems Performance on the MDGs.-.Chapter 3 Leadership and Health in Africa.-.Chapter 4 Population in Transition: North Africa's Health and Health Care System(s).-.Chapter 5 Health in Africa and the Role of International Organizations.