[AU-Monitor] "15% Now!" Petition to be submitted to African Union Summit holding in Addis Ababa, January 22-29, 2006

[Rotimi]

Dear Colleagues, Kindly sign up and circulate to regional, national and
thematic networks and contacts. Adequate investment in Reproductive Health &
Preventive Child Healthcare alone will save half the 8 million African lives
lost annually. Resolving Africa¹s health worker shortages are crucial to
meeting all health based MDG¹s. Every single African is a potential victim
of Africa¹s Public Health disaster. The Right to Health as defined by the
World health Organisation Constitution and Article 12 of the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is our most crucial right
of all. Please Act urgently.

============================================================================
===
*Petition to be submitted to African Union Summit holding in Addis Ababa,
January 22-29, 2006
 ===========================================================================
==========
 
To Heads of States and Governments
Of the African Union
 
African Union Headquarters
P.O. Box 3243 
Addis Ababa
Ethiopia
 
December 10 2006
 
 
Your Excellencies,
 
Appeal to African Union member States to without further delay implement the
2001 Abuja Summit pledge to allocate 15% of national budgets to healthcare
 
We write to appeal to you to act without further delay on arguably the most
crucial challenge African leaders will have to confront in modern times,
that of taking immediate and concrete action to end the tragic loss of an
estimated 8 million African lives annually to preventable, treatable or
manageable diseases, illnesses and health conditions.
 
Africans and friends of Africa were reassured when African governments
themselves recognised the scale of Africa¹s health crisis at the 2001 Abuja
African Union Summit on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Other Related Infectious
Diseases (ORID), and committed to allocate at least 15% of national budgets
to health care. However 5 years on, the great majority of the AU¹s 53 member
governments including those most hit by Africa¹s worsening Public Health
crisis have not even began the process of meeting this pledge.
 
Having convened numerous meetings on HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria especially
since the 2001 Abuja summit your Excellencies know that numerous lives have
been lost and continue to be lost annually. Latest UNAIDS, World Health
Organisation and other statistics for 2006 indicate that an estimated 24.7
million Africans are living with HIV, new infections are at a high of 2.8
million and annual death figures are 2.1 million. AIDS orphans are estimated
at 12 million. For Tuberculosis, African deaths are running at 586,911
annually (35% of the world total), African¹s living with TB are estimated to
be 3,740,695 (26%). New and aggressive drug resistant strains could easily
lead to a doubling of TB figures within a short period. For Malaria, annual
African deaths are estimated at 1,136,000 (89.3% of the world total). As the
relevant global and African agencies and institutions compile these
retrospectively, the situation could well be much worse today.
 
Statistics from UNFPA, UNIFEM, WHO and other institutions indicate maternal
mortality ratio estimates are highest in Africa at (830) per 100,000,
followed by Asia (330), Oceania (240), Latin America and the Caribbean
(190), and the more developed countries (20). Consequently an estimated
300,000 African women - over half the global total - die annually as a
result of inadequate facilities and staffing for childbirth. Experts
estimate that the spill over effect for this decade alone is an estimated
death of 5 million women, and children from birth related complications if
the trend continues. In addition there will be 49 million maternal
disabilities. 
 
Numerous UN and African institutions endorse the position that ³since almost
all maternal mortality is avoidable, the death of a woman during pregnancy
or childbirth is a violation of her rights to life and health as well as
being a social injustice². Sadly, increasing numbers of maternal deaths are
caused by indirect, non-obstetric conditions including infectious disease
(HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and hepatitis), chronic diseases (of the
heart, lung and liver), gender-based violence and multiple problems faced by
pregnant women in emergency situations. These maternal mortality levels
constitute a colossal negligence of the obligation of African governments to
provide adequate reproductive health.
 
Most worryingly for the future of Africa, an estimated 4.8 million deaths of
children under the age of 5 years occur annually. Just five diseases -
pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, measles and AIDS - account for half of these
deaths. Again global and African institutions are in agreement that
alongside providing proper nutrition ³most of these lives could be saved by
expanding low-cost prevention and treatment measures...including exclusive
breastfeeding of infants, antibiotics for acute respiratory infections, oral
rehydration for diarrhoea, immunization, and the use of insecticide-treated
mosquito nets and appropriate drugs for malaria.²
 
Significantly, Africa tops virtually every other global mortality league
table: from malnutrition; to water borne diseases like typhoid and cholera;
to cervical, breast, prostrate and other cancers; heart, liver, kidney and
lung disease etc. This is not counting river blindness, polio and others,
which disable individuals and communities. These losses are untenable and
unsustainable.
 
The implications for social and economic development are horrendous. Without
a healthy and active population especially in the key age groups and social
groups most affected, Africa has no future. Already UN and other experts
estimate that the number of lives that will be lost to major diseases in the
next 20 years alone is well over the 100 million mark. This is over double
the estimated figures for all other worst hit parts of the world combined.
 
In such circumstances, your Excellencies and your immediate successors may
well end up presiding over the extinction of your own people. We doubt that
there will be little point in having governments if there is no one to
govern.
 
We do not make this point lightly. The number of African lives lost annually
to preventable, treatable and manageable health issues alone is equal to
loosing annually, the entire populations of either Eritrea (4.4m people),
Libya (5.8m people), Sierra Leone (5.5m people), or Togo (6.1 people). Or,
any combination of 3 or 4 of the following countries: Botswana, Swaziland,
Lesotho, Namibia, Gambia, Gabon, Mauritius, Mauritania and Namibia all with
populations of 1.5 to 2 million annually. Consequently Africa¹s fastest
growing industry is the coffins and burial business. In 20 years the number
of lives lost could be equivalent to the population of Nigeria - (at 130
million) - Africa¹s most populous country.
 
We therefore urge your Excellencies to without delay ensure that the process
for each country meeting the 15% Abuja pledge is started immediately and met
by the next budget year.
 
We also urge you to ensure that a significant percentage of the 15% is
dedicated to resolving Africa¹s health worker shortages, which is
indisputably the most crucial component of every health sector. Without them
to diagnose, prescribe or otherwise prevent, treat and care, no amount of
medicines will resolve Africa¹s Public Health crisis. The World Health
Organisation report for 2006 states that although there is a universal
health worker shortage, it underlines that Africa is the only continent
where the total number of health worker shortages (817,992) exceeds the
existing number of health care workers (590,198). Lack of financial
resources for the health sector and policies of some developed countries
means that ŒBrain Drain¹ has exacerbated this problem. Consequently, Africa
has more health workers working outside Africa than any other continent.
 
A failure to reverse these health worker shortages within the next 4 to 6
years means that all of Africa¹s 2010 Universal Access targets for
prevention, treatment and care for HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria will definitely
not be met. Even worse the three 2015 health related Millenium Development
Goals - based on scaling up reproductive health, children¹s health, and
tackling the HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria and other diseases may be an
impossibility. Without doubt, the future of Africa hinges on whether or not
its public health crisis, (its overall human resource crisis) and in
particular its health worker shortage is resolved.
 
Excellencies, while we recognise that historical injustices and crimes
against humanity such as: the slave trade and colonialism (in which Africa
lost over a 100 million people over a longer 400 year period); and more
recently the debt burden; and conditionalities imposed by the IMF and other
IFI¹s capping budget expenditures, resulting in ceilings on health and
crucial sectors of the economy have blighted development of African
countries - fulfilling your 15% pledge without further delay will go a long
way towards demonstrating African governments political will, restoring
African dignity and ensuring that Africa¹s healthcare needs are met on a
sustainable basis, (and not dependent on donor support) in order to uphold
what is undoubtedly the most crucial Human Right of all, the Right to
Health, and ultimately to Life itself.
 
We appeal to you to act urgently
 
Signatories
 
 
{For organisations wishing to be part of this campaign kindly send - your
organisations name, contact details, name and position of contact  / For
individuals ­ your name, country, profession / vocation and email To
africa_15percentnowcampaign at yahoo.com  }
 
 

** The ³15% Now!² Campaign of the Africa Public Health Rights Alliance is an
initiative of the Centre for Research, Education and Development of Rights
in Africa (CREDO-Africa), in collaboration with its partners:
 
**The Alliance Partners are:

Action Group for Health, Human Rights and HIV/AIDS (AGHA), Uganda,
Africa
Health Research Organization 
Africa Internally Displaced Persons Voice
(Africa IDP Voice)
African Network of Religious Leaders Living with or
Personally Affected by HIV and AIDS (ANERELA+). 
Centre for Research,
Education and Development of Rights in Africa (CREDO-Africa)
Civil Society
Legislative Advocacy Centre ­ CISLAC Nigeria
Cross-of Ministries
International Uganda (CGMI)
Development Alternatives With Women for New Era
(DAWN-Africa)
Kenya Health Rights Advocacy Network (KHRAN)
KIGEZI Healthcare Foundation, Uganda 
Open Society Initiative for Southern
Africa (OSISA)
Oeuvre de Charité et Développement de LEMBA (OCDL ongd/asbl) - DRC
POSITIVE-Generation (Cameroon)
Positive Women¹s Network, South Africa
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)
Santayalla Support Society (Togo)
Society
for Women and AIDS in Africa ­ Southern Africa (SWAA Mozambique)
Southern
Africa HIV & AIDS Dissemination Services (Safaids)
Stop TB and HIV/AIDS-The
Gambia
Tbaction Kenya
Treatment Action Campaign (TAC)
Tuberculosis National
League (Cameroon)
Women Advocates and Research Documentation Centre (WARDC)
World Aids
Campaign (WAC)
 


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.fahamu.org/pipermail/au-monitor/attachments/20061214/7413d7d7/attachment.html