UNSIA Newsletter Issue 1, December 1997
African Ministers of Health endorse SIA
The health of Africans is a cause for satisfaction and moral outrage. For satisfaction because of the significant improvements in life expectancy since Independence. For outrage because preventable death, suffering from illness, and the consequential loss in human potential continue to ravage the Continent.
Despite the progress and efforts made, the health sector in Africa has to face not only the problems of communicable diseases from the past, but also new and re-emerging threats to better health, such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.
Health sector reform together with education, water, food security, and governance, has high priority under the SIA. The focus is on ensuring adequate access by all segments of society to essential health services through support for sector wide reform. Under the leadership of WHO, African ministers of health have endorsed the Initiative and African Heads of state have been fully briefed.
There is widespread agreement on the content of the health system-wide reform needed in Africa. The emphasis will be on basic health services and on health system-wide reforms at the country level. There is also recognition of the need to support under SIA sub-regional disease- focused health activities, for instance for disease such as HIV-AIDS, which have cross border implications. In this regard, there is preliminary discussion on possible funding sources to help the resource requirement of each inter-country activities.
In an increasing number of countries, sector investment programmes in the health sector are being considered under the SIA framework. Countries where such programmes are developed or are under preparation with assistance from the World Bank are Ghana, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Zambia. Resources will be mobilised at the country level in support of sector investment programmes.
WHO has also made significant contributions to this sector by developing strategies for health sector reform through a series of interagency and technical consultations, and by coordinating activities with other UN agencies. The Agency also participates in mobilising resources for inter-country activities and for country health sector programmes.
In the context of promotion and implementation of the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community, WHO introduced and developed a series of initiatives to support the national and collective health agendas of African governments and their multilateral institutions in close collaboration with partners within and outside the United Nations system. Other initiatives include:
¨ Collaboration with the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) is being reinforced in the context of its new strategic directions and of the SIA. With reference to "development management," under one of five newly structured ECA programme areas, an ECA/WHO joint project on the role of local government in health is being prepared.
¨ The Director-General led a WHO delegation to the Sixty-fourth Ordinary Session of the OAU Council of Ministers and Thirty-second Summit of Heads of State and Government (Yaounde 1996), as well as Sixty-sixth Ordinary Session of the Council of Ministers and 33rd Summit (Harare 1997) where the Harare Declaration on Malaria Prevention and Control in the Context of African Economic Recovery and Development has been adopted.