[AU-Monitor] "15% Now!" Petition to be submitted to African Union

[WILDAF-BSRAO]

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.

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*Petition to be submitted to African Union Summit holding in Addis Ababa, January 22-29, 2006
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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 130million) - 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 OBrain 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:
  1..  Action Group for Health, Human Rights and HIV/AIDS (AGHA), Uganda, Africa
  2.. Health Research Organization
  3.. Africa Internally Displaced Persons Voice (Africa IDP Voice)
  4.. African Network of Religious Leaders Living with or Personally Affected by HIV and AIDS (ANERELA+).
  5.. Centre for Research, Education and Development of Rights in Africa (CREDO-Africa)
  6.. Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre ­ CISLAC Nigeria
  7.. Cross-of Ministries
  8.. International Uganda (CGMI)
  9.. Development Alternatives With Women for New Era
  (DAWN-Africa)
  10.. Kenya Health Rights Advocacy Network (KHRAN)
  11.. KIGEZI Healthcare Foundation, Uganda
  12.. Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA)
  13.. Oeuvre de Charité et Développement de LEMBA (OCDL ongd/asbl) - DRC
  14.. POSITIVE-Generation (Cameroon)
  15.. Positive Women¹s Network, South Africa
  16.. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)
  17.. Santayalla Support Society (Togo)
  18.. Society for Women and AIDS in Africa ­ Southern Africa (SWAA Mozambique)
  19.. Southern Africa HIV & AIDS Dissemination Services (Safaids)
  20.. Stop TB and HIV/AIDS-The Gambia
  21.. Tbaction Kenya
  22.. Treatment Action Campaign (TAC)
  23.. Tuberculosis National League (Cameroon)
  24.. Women Advocates and Research Documentation Centre (WARDC)
  25.. World Aids Campaign (WAC)
  26.. Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF/FeDDAF)


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