Abimbola Akosile
1 July 2008
Lagos — A coalition of two hundred and five African and global organisations and networks have called on the Heads of State of the African Union (AU) to ensure the Implementation Plan of the AU Africa Health Strategy is urgently and adequately funded.
The African leaders and Ministers of Finance were also enjoined to restate and accelerate implementation of the AU Abuja Commitment to allocate 15 per cent of budgets to health.
The calls were premised on the fact that the Health Strategy Implementation Plan was to be presented for final approval to the Assembly of Heads of States meeting in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt on June 30 and July 1.
The Implementation Plan was adopted by African Ministers of Health on May 17 this year, following presentation of the Health Strategy last year by the AU Commission Social Affairs Division.
It provides guidelines for implementing various African health frameworks, health MDGs and global Universal Access targets including on TB, HIV and AIDS, Malaria, Child and Maternal Health.
In a statement on the eve of the Assembly, Coordinator of the Africa Public Health 15% Now Campaign, Mr. Rotimi Sankore said, "the AU Africa Health Strategy is a landmark document. But without funding for its Implementation Plan from our Heads of State and Finance Ministers, it will be reduced to an empty gesture".
"This is likely to result in even more deaths than the current 8 million African lives lost annually to mainly five health conditions being TB, HIV and AIDS, Malaria, child and maternal mortality."
According to Sankore, "while many of our Finance Ministers recognise the urgency of health funding, they have not acted on this and need to do so. It is also serious cause for concern that some think that there are other issues more important than health. We are not saying that roads, or energy are not important. But we are saying that dead or dying people have no need for them."
"Africa's human capital is its greatest development asset. But with Africa losing 4.8 million infants and children annually, and average healthy life expectancy dropping to less than 40 years in many countries, not only is our future dying before our eyes, millions of skilled workers and professionals that provide the engine for economic development, and underpin the purchasing power vital to growing economies are dying in their prime," he emphasised further.
The Campaign coordinator cautioned African governments against being carried away by hollow economic growth statistics.
"Statistical economic growth, with no sustainable investment in social development: health, food production, education, gender equality, water and sanitation, is negative growth; because there is no real improvement in living standards and social and economic rights", he said.
He underlined that African governments must start investing sustainably in health now before the cost of containing infectious diseases in particular spirals out of control.
"For instance, latest Stop TB partnership/World Bank analysis indicates that the cost of not treating TB to Africa between 2006 and 2015 would be $519bn while TB can be controlled with $20bn in the same period."
The 15% Now Campaign Coordinator called on African leaders to ensure that they go from the AU Summit to the Japan G8 in early July with a message that they are meeting their own commitments alongside calls for global commitments to be met.
"If we compare health expenditure and key indicators between more developed and developing countries of roughly equivalent population: Japan which hosts the G8 next month and Nigeria have 127m and 144m people respectively".
"Japan spends 17.8 per cent of its budget on health. Nigeria only 3.5 per cent. Japan has 270,371 doctors, 1.2m nurses and midwives, and 241,369 Pharmacists. Nigeria only 34,923 doctors and 210,306 nurses and midwives, and 6,344 pharmacists. Japans healthy life expectancy is 75 years and Nigeria's a mere 42 years. Japan has 17,000 people living with HIV, Nigeria has 2.9m. Japan has a TB prevalence of 37,490, Nigeria has 889,666", Sankore disclosed.
"Even taking into account the poaching of African health workers by developed countries to subsidise their own health systems, at current levels of investment in health systems and disease specific issues, it is clear to see that Japans health will get better while Nigeria's will get worse unless Nigeria increases its own health investment to ensure that international solidarity is meaningful", he added.
The Africa Public Health '15% Now' campaign launched on December 10 2006 (International Human Rights Day) is the first to articulate Public Health for Africa as a Rights and Development issue across Africa and beyond. It brings together actors from various key sectors of civil society.
The Campaign is based on the premise that 'we all have to be alive and well to exercise any other rights in any meaningful way' and therefore that Right to Health and to Healthcare is arguably the most crucial right of all as articulated by Article 16 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, the constitution of the World Health Organisation and Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
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