Washington/Brazzaville, 11 May 2010 -- The World Health Organization Regional Director for Africa, Dr Luis Sambo has said that in spite of progress made since the adoption of the Abuja Declarations, more needs to be done to address the health challenges facing the African continent.

He made these remarks at an event on “Assessing Progress on the Abuja Declarations on Health” organized by the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington, USA. It was attended by diplomats, policy makers and global health professionals.

The Abuja Declaration on malaria was adopted in 2000 by Heads of States in which they committed themselves to a 50% reduction in malaria deaths by 2010. In the following year, the Abuja Declaration on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other related infectious diseases, was also adopted and HIV/AIDS was declared an emergency in the African continent. The leaders agreed on a comprehensive multisectoral response to HIV/AIDS and pledged among other actions to allocate 15 percent of their national budgets to the health sector.

Dr Sambo said that ten years on, there has been improvement in coverage, access to treatment and care for HIV/AIDS and malaria. He told delegates that over a million deaths from malaria have been averted. With regards to HIV/AIDS, only 2 percent of patients in need of treatment were receiving it in 2002, but this figure has increased to 44 percent in 2008. Furthermore, HIV/AIDS prevalence has dropped from 5.8 percent to 5.2 percent. He commended external resources including that from PEPFAR and the Global Fund for having contributed significantly to giving hope to patients.

However, despite these improvements, the diseases are still creating an enormous negative impact on the lives of people, contributing to a substantial decrease in life expectancy from 60 years in the 1990s to 50 years in 2010. He pointed out that for every HIV/AIDS patient being treated; three more people are newly infected.

The Regional Director reiterated the need to do more in terms of prevention, treatment and control as well as addressing the funding gaps. He told delegates that following an assessment of annual financing needs by 2010 conducted by the African MDG Steering Group, the region requires $12 billion to deal with the HIV/AIDS crisis, but is receiving half of this amount. He said Tuberculosis is also receiving only half of the amount required to address it. Concerning health system strengthening, the needs are much higher but the international community has paid very little attention to this.

Most countries in the region have not been able to fulfil the pledged allocation of 15% of national budgets to health. These funding gaps as well as the emergence of multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extensively multi-drug resistant (XDR) strains of TB present an enormous challenge to health in the region particularly in the Southern African region. This situation is also compounded by the lack of availability of integrated services for responding to dual HIV/TB services in some countries.

“In terms of broadening international health partnerships focus, we need to address health system strengthening, maternal and child health and other key determinants of heath”, Dr Sambo stressed.

“We need to also address the issues first of recognizing the ownership and leadership of national governments, improving the coordination and harmonization among international partners and aligning the different contributions to country policies, priorities and systems and focusing more on health system strengthening. These will bring benefits for the delivery of all types of public health interventions”, he added.

The Regional Director underscored the importance of improving disease surveillance, strengthening epidemic preparedness and the capacity of national health information systems to provide reliable statistics.

He welcomed the Global Health initiatives of the US government and expressed the hope that it will bring more resources for better outcomes in areas of disease control, health system strengthening and improvement in access to health care.

With regards to the priorities of WHO in the African region for the next five years, the Regional Director informed delegates that there will be six areas of focus which are: strengthening partnerships and harmonisation; providing support for strengthening of national health systems based on the Ouagadougou Declaration on Primary Health Care and Health Systems Strengthening in Africa; putting mothers and children first; supporting accelerated actions on HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis; intensifying the prevention and control of neglected tropical disease, chronic disease and epidemics ; and accelerating advocacy for better response to health determinants.

He concluded that the Abuja Declarations created new opportunities in the fight against HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases. He noted that although some countries have made progress than others, the gains so far are a source of inspiration proving that it is possible to make an improvement in the region’s health outcomes given the availability of funds and the more efficient use of it.

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