With up to 70 per cent of the world’s population estimated to be living in urban areas by 2050, global health will be determined increasingly in cities. Improving urban health in Africa is a major challenge, given 70 per cent of urban dwellers presently live in informal settlements, facing a triple or quadruple disease burden: poverty-related diseases, emerging chronic disease, injuries and HIV/AIDS. This public lecture explored the future of urban health in Africa, asking whether and how we might move towards healthy African cities, including by re-thinking planning and design.
The second lecture in this series ‘Interdisciplinary Perspectives for Healthy Cities‘ will be on 26 April 2013 18.30 – 20.00.
Photo courtesy of Vanessa Watson: Kids playing in Khayelitsha, a partially informal township in Western Cape, South Africa.