Aaron Motsoaledi was speaking at a World Health Organization conference at Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls where the host 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe frequently travels visits eye specialists in  Singapore.

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Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi says African leaders travel abroad for medical attention because they are not confident of receiving adequate treatment at home.

Because they can afford to do this, they are not motivated to provide the resources to improve domestic medical services and infrastructure.

He says Africa’s the only continent where leaders travel abroad for health reasons.

They should be ashamed of this and should be promoting their own hospitals, clinics and specialist doctors.

This year, Nigeria’s Muhamadu Buhari has spent no less than five months in British hospitals. He still has not revealed to his people what ails him.

Last year, Buhari rounded on wealthy compatriots  going to European, Asian or American hospitals, dismissing them as health tourists.

Outgoing Angola President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos has fallen into this category.

So have Presidents Patrice Talon of Benin and Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria.

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe officially opened the conference addressed by Motsoaledi.

He was not at the gathering at Victoria Falls when the South African minister spoke.

The post South African minister lashes African health tourists appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

Tensions are rising in Africa’s most populous country as the wait goes on.

Technical difficulties led to a second day of voting on Sunday.

Voting has been largely peaceful across Nigeria although unidentified gunmen killed more than 20 firing at polling stations in the northeast of the country where the islamist terror group Boko Haram has gained a foothold.

This is the closest race for the presidency since independence in 1960.

President Goodluck Jonathan’s hoping to hold power and avoid Nigeria’s first democratic transfer of government.

But he’s been taken to line by former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari campaigning as the man who can get a grip on the country’s deteriorating security.

The post Nigeria presidential election result expected tonight appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.