Internally displaced women at a distribution point at Salama IDP Camp in Galkayo, Somalia (drought-hit Mudug region). September 10, 2017. Photo by Faaris Adam and used with permission. As the World Health Organization (WHO) marked its 70th year anniversary on Saturday, April 7, 2018 with World Health Day, African nations continue to struggle to improve basic health care, often facing serious health crises that hardly make the headlines. Poor basic health conditions within nations like Somalia in East Africa and Nigeria in West Africa contradict WHO's core founding principles: The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition. Due to the long term trauma of civil war in Somalia, mental health is a massive problem compounded by the lack of public health facilities to deal with psychiatric illness. Somalia holds one of the world’s highest rates for mental health issues, with approximately one in three Somalis suffering from some form of mental illness, according to a WHO report. Those with mental illness face extreme social stigma such as intentional isolation, restraint, and imprisonment because society fears they may hurt people or themselves. Says Warsame, a pastoralist who lives in the rural area of the Mudug Region: [a] 42-year-old took his sister to the clinic to find a treatment after being ill for years, Safiya had been ill for two years, and I decided to take her to the patient care center in Galkayo. There are very few facilities available to treat people with mental illness throughout the country and the condition of these centers is grossly inadequate, often being too small for patients to get enough medicine. Ahmed Bali, a psychiatric nurse at Galkayo Mental Health Central, the only center in Galkayo to care for people with mental illness, explains: This center is public and is built by the community, and patients are all women and not charged for the services that we provide including accommodation and foods but the patients’ medicines are purchased. Bali adds that in Somali culture, people with mental illness are called “Ninka Waalan” (Mad Man in Somali) and children often throw stones and insults as well. According to recent reports, Nigeria in West Africa currently faces two serious health challenges: the menace of drug abuse and the brain drain of health professionals to Western countries. Nigerians have seen a significant rise in drug dependency, especially among youth. According to Nigerian scholar Umar Lawal Yusuf and his colleagues, drug abuse is: a disorder that is characterized by a destructive pattern of using a substance that leads to significant problems or distress. Teens are increasingly engaging in prescription drug abuse, particularly narcotics (which are prescribed to relieve severe pain), and stimulant medications, which treat conditions like attention deficit disorder and narcolepsy. Drug abuse or drug dependence (as preferred by the world health organization), is defined as ‘a state of psychic or physical dependence, or both on a drug, following administration of the drug on a periodic or continuous basis.’ Research shows that the drug abuse varies but that the most common ones mentioned in Yusuf's study are: alcohol (illicit gin or beer), cocaine, nicotine, phencyclidine (commonly referred to as PCP), and sedatives or anxiety drugs. In addition, some Nigerian youths have also taken to the abuse of prescription drugs: Everyday, over a 500,000 bottles of codeine are consumed by young Nigerians across the country, same with the intake of tramadol, rohypnol, marijuana, and other opioids, an alarming trend that has subtly eaten deeply into the Nigerian fabric with children of all classes having a field day abusing these drugs. But parents, stakeholders and the society continue to live in self-denial as a time bomb waits to explode. Recent reports reveal that “over three million bottles of codeine syrup were consumed daily in Kano and Jigawa states” in northern Nigeria. This Facebook video released by Tony Rapu shows some Nigerian men injecting heroin into their bodies in Lagos, Nigeria [warning: graphic video]. Nigeria youth are even “mixing methylated spirit and [Coca-Cola] coke to get high”: Mixing this spirit with coke might douse the bad taste but it doesn’t change the fact that in a bid to get high, young people are slowly doing irreparable damage to their own bodies. Drug abuse has now become a hydra-headed monster. As appealing as the idea of placing stringent rules on the sale of drugs may seem, it is too obvious that it does nothing to solve the problem.