Kampala — Mozambican Health Minister Ivo Garrido has assessed as positive the debate on mother and child health at the Heads of State summit of the African Union which ends on Tuesday in Kampala

Garrido, who is a member of the Mozambican delegation led by President Armando Guebuza, praised the choice of theme, since is the first time that African Heads of State have met specifically to discuss this issue.

The theme was proposed by Mozambique, following the Presidential Initiative on Mother and Child Health that Guebuza launched in 2008.

Garrido disagreed with those who thought this theme was secondary at a time when Africa is facing a major terrorist challenge from Islamic fundamentalists in Somalia, and when there is a bitter disputer over the arrest warrant on genocide charges against Sudanese President Omar al-Bachir.

In fact, the Minister noted, there had been a lively debate which took up much more time than the three hours initially allocated. "For those who were saying that this theme wasn't fundamental because of the questions of Somalia and the International Criminal Court, the Heads of State and Government have given an unequivocal response", he noted. "A debate which should have lasted three hours ended up taking more than eight".

"No other theme at this conference is going to occupy as much as half the time that was spent on the issue of mother and child health", Garrido told the Mozambican journalists covering the summit.

He said that the Heads of State and Government had shared experiences and challenges, and discussed mechanisms for providing a good level of health care for women and children. They were particularly concerned about how Africa can step up actions to reduce the rates of infant and maternal mortality, which are higher in Africa than in any other region of the globe.

Thus, although Africa has only 11 per cent of the world's population, it has 49 per cent of its maternal mortality and 50 per cent of its infant mortality.

"These facts are a tremendous burden on our continent", said Garrido, "and at the end of this session we were all clear that we have to do something, passing from rhetoric to action".

"It's true that 2015 is the deadline fixed in the Millennium Development Goals for reducing the under five mortality rate by two thirds and the maternal mortality rate by three quarters", he added. "But our concern is not 2015. The continent will continue to work after 2015, and the main message was that we have to step up our actions to reduce infant and maternal mortality".

He thought there were three priority aspects for success in this struggle, "first, political commitment at the highest level, and this was shown at this summit; second, the definition of clear and specific plans of action, with well defined priorities and budgets; and finally, the necessary human and financial resources".

"In this context, it is interesting to note that the Heads of State unanimously declared that we should count, in the first place, on our internal human resources, and we can regard as secondary the aid from outside", said Guebuza.

As for the situation in Mozambique, Garrido said that infant mortality has been falling consistently since 1990, but "not at the pace that we would like. Currently we have an infant mortality rate of 138 per 1,000 live births. It's unacceptably high. Even in Maputo City we have a rate of 108 per 1,000 births".

Maternal mortality is also a matter of serious concern. The figure released by the Health Ministry in 2008 was that 480 women die for every 100,000 live births.

Garrido thought the key to reducing mortality rates lay in accelerated training of health staff. The government is thus committed to expanding the existing training centres and creating new ones, such as health institutes in the northern port of Nacala and the southern city of Matola.