Mike Mwaniki
15 December 2007
Nairobi — A heavy disease burden is the reason behind declining life expectancy in Africa, an international conference has been told this week.
Zanzibar President Amani Abeid Karume said emergence of diseases such as HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis had led to a sharp decline in life expectancy.
Currently, he said, men in Africa can only expect to live for an average of 51 years while females can live for another two years.
The maternal mortality ratio, President Karume said, was estimated at between 500 and 1,000 deaths for every 100,000 live births compared to a ratio of 10 in developed countries.
Anti-retroviral drugs
It was sad to note that out of the 22.5 million people living with HIV and Aids, only a fraction of them were able to access life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs, said President Karume.
"Even where access to the treatment has improved, hunger and widespread poverty continue to make HIV/Aids the biggest challenge to the African continent to date," he said when he opened the Fifth African Population Conference in Arusha on Monday.
He asked African countries to give priority to population and health issues through increased funding.
Delegates at the five-day conference that ended Friday included leading scientists and policy makers, seeking solutions to various problems facing the continent.
They include poverty, hunger, diseases especially malaria and HIV and Aids, gender-based violence, rural to urban migrations, urbanisation, high fertility rates and other issues involving population and development.
The meeting has attracted about 1,000 delegates.
President Karume said the rapid population growth rates in Kenya and other African countries posed a major challenge to the continent's socio-economic growth.
"The number of people in Africa currently stands at 924 million and is projected to reach 1.4 billion by 2025 and two billion by 2050"
"This is an indication that our population is not only growing at a very rapid rate but also that the continent has a huge number of youth," he said.
President Karume also decried the high fertility rate in the region - which stands at 5.1 per cent - saying it was the highest in the world.
"At the same time, the crude death rate in the region stands at 15 deaths per 1,000 persons while infant mortality rate is estimated at 88 per 1,000 live births-the world's highest by far,"
President Karume identified a high disease burden, inadequate investment in human capital, gender inequality, youth marginalisation as well as political instability in some African countries as some of the factors that under-pin poverty in the region.
Unfair pricing
"External factors such as the debilitating debt crisis, and unfavourable terms of trade and unfair pricing of raw materials that most African economies depend on, and inaccessible markets of the developed countries"
A report released at the conference faulted the Kenya Government for failing to initiate programmes for more than 10,000 teachers infected by HIV/Aids.
The African Population and Health Research Centre report says that out of the country's 250,000 teachers, nearly 13,000 are living with the virus.
And while they form the single largest block of workers in the country, few programmes are directed at them as individuals who are infected and affected by HIV.
"This may be largely because schools are seen from the perspective of learners, and not often from the perspective of the employees," says the report.
And, in a bid to protect them, a teacher-centred HIV work place in Kenya dubbed the Teachers Matter programme has been introduced.
The work place intervention was implemented in 180 schools in Kenya.
The research was based on quasi-experimental design, and collectively the project reached more than 2,700 teachers.
According to the report, teachers enrolled in the programme recommended that the initiative be continued.
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