Business Daily (Nairobi)
George Omondi
27 October 2009
Africa's health policy makers hope to use the ongoing global conference on health promotion to lobby governments to increase funding to the sector in an effort to provide quality healthcare to poor citizens.
The continent's rapid population growth has outpaced the rate at which both the government and private sector are investing in new healthcare facilities on the continent.
This has further been aggravated by the fact that just a small fraction of the employed population has access to medical insurance cover, meaning majority of the population are exposed to myriad communicable diseases that are common in the region.
Kenya, which is hosting this year's conference -- the first time the global event is being held in Africa since its inception in 1986 in Ottawa -- is one of nations whose funding to the public healthcare system falls far below Africa's own benchmark.
Yet government data indicates that the cost of medical services in the country has risen by 13.4 per cent in the past 12 months to August, coming only second to food (25.9 per cent) of the inflation items that recorded the highest price gains.
At the official opening of the conference on Monday, both the Medical services minister, Prof Anyang' Nyong'o and Public health minister Beth Mugo asked the government to increase the budgetary allocation to the health sector in the next fiscal year as one way of providing quality healthcare for a majority of the people who cannot afford health services.
"While there is a marked reduction in the incidence of infectious diseases in the country, the emergence of new diseases likes influenza H1N1 and the re-emergence of eradicated ones like polio demand that state increases funding to the health sector towards the 15 per cent mark," said Mrs Mugo
The five-day conference seeks to find innovative ways in which the rich and poor countries can work together to bridge the gaps in implementation of the global campaigns aimed at providing quality healthcare to all.
With the global financial crisis and the raging climate change, health policy makers reckon that pledges such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are likely to ignored in the global priority list
Mrs Mugo's call for increased funding is a tacit reminder to the leaders that the 2001 Abuja declaration remains unfulfilled almost 10 years since it was made.
African leaders meeting in Nigeria in April 2001 had pledged to gradually increase national budgetary allocations to health sector ministries to peak at 15 per cent of the gross national products by 2010.
For Kenya, World Health Organisa (WHO) statistics still indicate that the government's total expenditure on health sector stands at 4.6 per cent of the national wealth.
For a country whose GDP now stands at Sh2.1 trillion, the decision by finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta to allocate only Sh13.7 billion to public health and sanitation and Sh25.8 billion to medical services ministry has left no doubt that the government will not meet its millennium development goals by 2015.
A recent WHO study identifies Kenya as one of the countries with lowest budgetary allocations to health sector.
President Kibaki who presided over the official opening of the Nairobi conference said funding health sector in Africa was constrained by many challenges like poverty, housing, food security and providing affordable education.
"I call upon the international community to focus attention on these challenges as this conference looks into ways of forging partnerships with this region," he said.
As the world approaches the 2015, the date by which the United Nations expect all countries to have moved halfway of the MDGs, government statistics indicate that Kenya has managed to reduce the under-five mortality rat by 40 per cent over the last five years.
But this has largely been achieved through increased immunisation coverage and use of insecticide treated bed nets to control malaria rather than increased investment in health institutions.
Prof Nyong'o expressed optimism that the Nairobi conference will pave way for the establishment of a sustainable institutional framework that will deliver affordable healthcare to all.
"Today, the world is paying heavily for ignoring the pledges made in 1978. This conference must be used to seal the past loopholes," he said
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