Over the past ten years, frequent outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases and mosquito-borne diseases have occurred in Africa. Electric and electronic waste (e-waste) is also a fast-growing concern. There have been significant radiation incidents reported, and new and more toxic substances (dioxins, furans and heavy metals) are creating environmental and health problems and new occupational risks in Africa. According to this paper, the management of hazardous wastes must focus on environmentally sound treatment and/or long-term storage. It notes that a renewed and stronger commitment to the implementation of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants is needed. African governments may wish to consider including the following actions: monitoring of new and emerging environmental threats; reviewing their emergency preparedness plans; developing and implementing awareness-raising campaigns on the most important risks factors; and undertaking community sensitisation and education.
Equity in Health
This publication covers a number of areas relevant to indigenous people around the world. Chapter 5 deals specifically with health. It points out that the commitment of United Nations Member States to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is an important step forward in improving the health of millions of people who live in poverty around the world. However, by failing to ground the goals in an approach that upholds indigenous peoples’ individual and collective rights, the MDGs fall short in addressing the health disparities that persist between indigenous peoples and other poor, marginalised groups. By advancing the dominant paradigms of health and development rather than an approach based on individual and collective human rights, the MDGs also promote projects that are potentially detrimental to indigenous peoples, and which violate their rights to their collective land, territories and natural resources. Moreover, because the cultures and worldviews of indigenous peoples are not taken into account in the formulation of the MDGs, the goals do not consider the indigenous concept of health, which extends beyond the physical and mental well-being of an individual to the spiritual balance and well-being of the community as a whole. To improve the health situation of indigenous peoples, this report notes that there must thus be a fundamental shift in the concept of health so that it incorporates the cultures and world views of indigenous peoples as central to the design and management of state health systems.
The authors of this paper propose a pluralist notion of fair distribution of health that is compatible with several theories of distributive justice. It consists of the weak principle of health equality and the principle of fair trade-offs. The weak principle of health equality offers an alternative definition of health equity to those proposed in the past. It maintains the all-encompassing nature of the popular Whitehead/Dahlgren definition of health equity, and at the same time offers a richer philosophical foundation. This principle states that every person or group should have equal health except when: health equality is only possible by making someone less healthy, or there are technological limitations on further health improvement. In short, health inequalities that are amenable to positive human intervention are unfair. The principle of fair trade-offs states that weak equality of health is morally objectionable if and only if: further reduction of weak inequality leads to unacceptable sacrifices of average or overall health of the population, or further reduction in weak health inequality would result in unacceptable sacrifices of other important goods, such as education, employment, and social security.
Unsafe water bodies, poor access to safe drinking water, indoor and outdoor air pollution, unhygienic or unsafe food, poor sanitation, inadequate waste disposal, absent or unsafe vector control, and exposure to chemicals and injuries have been identified as key environmental risks to human health in most countries in Africa. The underlining reasons for this situation include inadequate or flawed policies, weak institutional capacities, shortage of resources and low general awareness of links between the environment and health. This paper suggests that governments re-orient their national policies to foster a greater contribution of environmental management towards public health. Specifically, governments may consider creating national frameworks and mechanisms for inter-sectoral action to adequately address the links between health and the environment, invest in the required infrastructure related to health and environmental services, build from past and current experiences, revitalise expertise in environmental management for health, and increase communication and community education to raise awareness of how individual practices can impact upon human health and the environment.
The methodology of priority setting in health care has reached an advanced stage of development, but it is difficult to integrate public health and social interventions into the traditional cost effectiveness approach. Priority setting tends to be drawn towards cost-benefit rather than cost effectiveness analysis, a much more demanding methodology. Furthermore, analysis of equity requires modelling differential responses by subgroup, again increasing complexity. There has been some work by economists on how society values identical health gains for different population groups. In principle, this research can be used to adjust cost-effectiveness ratios for equity concerns. However, studies so far have been relatively small scale and tentative in their conclusions. Given the methodological challenges, policy makers (including the UK government) have developed a more pragmatic approach towards priority setting, in the form of descriptive health impact assessments. These are likely to be especially helpful when examining cross-departmental initiatives.
This report presents progress made since the last report in 2007, discusses how far the continent still needs to travel, at what speed, and what needs to be done further. It is an abridged version of a much more comprehensive joint Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), African Union Commission (AUC), and African Development Bank (AfDB) report to the July 2008 African Union Summit. The conditions for accelerating growth and development to meet the targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are largely in place. Since the last report, the number of African countries with MDGs-consistent poverty reduction strategies or national development plans has risen to about 41. Growth, fueled in large measure by appropriate policy reforms, favourable primary product prices and a marked improvement in peace and security, notably in the west and south central regions remains strong. In 2007, for example, more than 25 African countries achieved a real GDP growth rate of 5% or above while another 14 grew at between 3 and 5%. However, the continent’s average annual growth rate of approximately 5.8% still remains significantly lower than the 7% annual growth rate required to reduce poverty by half by 2015. This growth is increasingly coming under threat from new developments. Rising food and oil prices, as well as climate change, pose significant risks to the preservation and acceleration of growth and to progress towards the targets of the MDGs in the region.
After a century of failed tuberculosis (TB) control strategies on South Africa’s mines, and three major but ineffective enquiries and commissions, a government-led ‘TB in Mines Task Team’ is being set up to address the deepening HIV-driven crisis. The HIV-fuelled TB epidemic, compounded by rising drug resistance, is now estimated at 3,500 per 100,000 mine workers, with 40% of all autopsies on men who die working on the mines revealing they had TB. Worker migration from rural areas throughout southern Africa to Gauteng and surrounding industrial areas to work in the mining, building and other dominant sectors is a major driver of the rampant TB epidemic. National TB prevalence has increased nearly threefold in the past decade. South Africa was among the 10 worst performing countries on TB control, and Statistics SA had found that, for every 100 deaths in 2006, 13 were from TB, making it the leading cause of death. Less than 1% of all HIV-infected individuals in this country were accessing proven safe and effective Isoniazid Preventative TB Therapy.
Global life expectancy could be increased by nearly five years by addressing five factors affecting health – childhood underweight, unsafe sex, alcohol use, lack of safe water, sanitation and hygiene, and high blood pressure, according to this report. These are responsible for one-quarter of the 60 million deaths estimated to occur annually. The report describes 24 factors affecting health, which are a mix of environmental, behavioural and physiological factors, such as air pollution, tobacco use and poor nutrition. More than a third of the global child deaths can be attributed to a few nutritional risk factors such as childhood underweight, inadequate breastfeeding and zinc deficiency. Eight risk factors alone account for over 75% of cases of coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death worldwide. These are alcohol consumption, high blood glucose, tobacco use, high blood pressure, high body mass index, high cholesterol, low fruit and vegetable intake and physical inactivity. Most of these deaths occur in developing countries.
Sub-Saharan Africa is off-track to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for maternal and child health by 2015. Each year 265,000 mothers die due to complications of pregnancy and childbirth, 1,243,000 babies die before they reach one month of age and a further 3,157,000 children die before their fifth birthday. Nevertheless, there is clear evidence demonstrating that progress can be achieved even in low-income countries. This evidence, together with the unprecedented new investments in maternal and child health from continental leaders and increasingly from development partners, offers new hope for the future. Improving health systems and promoting high impact interventions are crucial and require partnerships between scientists, health care providers with government, development partners, policy makers, civil society and communities. Four key actions include: further investment and tracking of resources; equitable implementation of programmes; innovation in research; and using evidence as a basis for health policy and resource allocation.
The most widely cited definition of health inequity is: ‘Health inequalities that are avoidable, unnecessary, and unfair are unjust.’ This paper argues that this definition is useful but in need of further clarification because it is not linked to broader theories of justice. It proposes an alternative, pluralist notion of fair distribution of health that is compatible with several theories of distributive justice, based on the principle of equality, which states that every person or group should have equal health except when health equality is only possible by making someone less healthy, or if there are technological limitations on further health improvement. In short, health inequalities that are amenable to positive human intervention are unfair. This principle is offset by the principle of fair trade-offs, which states that weak equality of health is morally objectionable if, and only if, further reduction of weak inequality leads to unacceptable sacrifices of average or overall health of the population, or if further reduction in weak health inequality would result in unacceptable sacrifices of other important goods, such as education, employment and social security.