Leaders Must Make 15% Pledge

The Africa Public Health Rights Alliance “15% Now!” Campaign has called on the new Chair of SADC President Levy Patrick Mwanawasa to make it a priority of his term of office to ensure that alongside upholding Democracy and Good Governance, all SADC countries emulate the leadership of Botswana and meet the Abuja African Union pledge to allocate at least 15% of national budgets to health.

President Mwanawasa assumed SADC leadership at the end of the last summit that ended on the 17th of August. In a statement issued in Lusaka, the Campaigns coordinator Rotimi Sankore stated: “SADC leaders must realise that they have no choice but to follow the lead of Botswana in meeting the Abuja 15% pledge. Its really a choice between meeting the 15% commitment now, or presiding over mass burials of citizens between now and 2015 when they should have met the health based Millennium Development Goals”.

He underlined that “Southern Africa is the sub-region worst hit by HIV, TB, Maternal and Child Mortality in Africa. The majority of the 8 million Africans dying unacceptably every year from these four killer diseases are from within SADC. With high prevalence rates killing numbers that are the equivalent of many SADC countries, there is a real possibility that many SADC countries could become unviable within ten to fifteen years.”

“Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa must make sustainable health financing and investment in health workers the main agenda of his leadership of SADC which commences this week. Nothing can be more important. It’s not just an abstract matter. Zambia itself is on the brink of catastrophe. A situation in which Zambia has 1,264 doctors and 16,990 nurses for a population of 11.6 million is unacceptable. Only Malawi with 266 Doctors and 7,264 nurses for 12.8 million people is in a worse situation. Compared to a medium income country like Cuba, which has 66,567 doctors and 83,880 nurses for a similar population of 11.2million, it’s clear that urgent and decisive action is required. He further called on all sectors of SADC Civil Society to “join the campaign for the 15%” describing it as “arguably the most important campaign of our lives”

Campaign partner Joseph Chilengi of the Zambian based Africa Internally Displaced Persons Voice added, “States, not individuals must be responsible for provision of health care. We are now facing a situation in which the majority of SADC citizens have been displaced from health care delivery. We must break the link between poverty and healthcare by investing heavily in health infrastructure and health workers and ensure that people’s personal circumstances do not dictate their life expectancy. If individuals die en-mass our countries die. The average life expectancy in SADC is now 40 years and still dropping and this is unacceptable.”

Felix Mwanza, Director of the Zambian Treatment Advocacy Literacy Campaign decried “a situation in which civil society have been excluded from decision making processes in most SADC countries” stating that “the failure of our government to meet even the targets they have set for universal access to prevention, treatment and care suggest very clearly that they are not making the best use of available human and financial resources. Yet when we call attention to this we are often treated as if we are interlopers in our own lives. The role of civil society is to act as a barometer for official policy and we urge our government to recognise that they need civil society to contribute to policy development at both national and regional levels”

Speaking in support of the campaign and in a statement issued ahead of the summit, United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Elizabeth Mataka had also called on the leaders “to ensure that their commitment of allocating 15% of their national budgets to the health care sector is realized” underling the fact SADC having the greatest burden of HIV/AIDS prevalence “ has led to a reversal in developmental gains that the region has accomplished during the last few decades.”

For more information please visit: http://www.africa15percentcampaign.org

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