The 8th meeting of the Africa Partnership Forum (APF) took place from 22-23 May 2007 in Berlin, just two weeks before the G8 Heiligendamm summit. Participants included Personal Representatives for the G8-Africa Process coming from G8 and OECD countries and from African member states of the NEPAD steering committee. Participants discussed four key areas affecting Africa: investment, gender, climate change, and peace and security. Through the intensive dialogue between the G8 Africa Personal Representatives and the African partners in preparing the APF, this year’s APF developed substantive recommendations for the G8 summit as well as for the AU summit, thus following up the joint work on the G8 Africa Action Plan adopted in Kananaskis in 2002.
Equity in Health
Growing scientific evidence points to the pervasiveness of inequities in health and health care and the persistence of the inverse care law, that is the availability of good quality healthcare seems to be inversely related to the need for it in developing countries. Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals is likely to be compromised if inequities in health/healthcare are not properly addressed.
The World Health Assembly (WHA), the supreme decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO), wrapped-up its sixtieth session today, reaching last-minute agreement on two key resolutions on Pandemic influenza preparedness and Public health, innovation and intellectual property. More than 2400 people from WHO's 193 Member States, nongovernmental organizations and other observers attended the meeting which took place from 14-23 May.
The 44th Health Ministers' Conference meeting was attended by Hon Ministers of Health and senior officials from member states in east, central and southern Africa, health experts, and collaborating partners. The theme of the conference was “Scaling up cost effective interventions to attain the Millennium Development Goals”. The conference approved and adopted resolutions based on the sub themes of the conference that are presented in this document.
The last quarter of the twentieth century saw little investment in international health or in the health problems of the world's poor. Over the past few years, as Laurie Garrett notes, "driven by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, a marvelous momentum for health assistance has been built and shows no signs of abating." But after this upbeat introduction, Garrett proceeds to lay out the perils associated with this new momentum, chief among them that an influx of AIDS money has drawn attention away from other health problems of the poor, weakened public health systems, contributed to brain drain, and failed to reach those most in need.
Equity has in many instances been framed around the notion of fairness. But the metric used to determine what is fair leaves some people at a disadvantage because the things that they value are not always taken properly into account. The debate about judging equity – about measuring fairness – needs to find the conceptual and methodological space to allow the voices and claims of the other to be heard.
The persistence of health inequities provides an ongoing challenge for health promotion. The dictum 'think globally, act locally' fails to recognise the significance of infrastructure and policy in linking global issues and local practices as a means of addressing health inequities. This article is in the form of a commentary and opinion, and final comments include that Health promotion needs to beg, borrow and build political and media advocacy skills if it is to go beyond local demonstration projects and have the capacity to promote population health and address health inequities.
In the February newsletter we carried stories of the World Social Forum held in January 2007 and called for comment and report from those who attended. In this issue we carry three of the responses, that give a different set of lenses on and expectations of the WSF. They signal aspirations and contradictions that seemed to resonate across the WSF. The WSF offered all the potential of an agenda of social justice, international solidarity, gender equality, peace and defence of the of the environment. This made reports of big business sales of food, corporate signs and overshadowing of local people by international organisations harsh and visible contradictions. But the WSF also gave visibility and support to struggles for health and an opportunity to amplify the call on African Union member states to meet their commitments in health, like the pledge to spend 15% of government spending on health. If the “battle for ideas” is central to the building of alternatives, the WSF taught that it is not only the content of the ideas that count, but who owns and voices them.
Prior to the World Social Forum in Nairobi, as people from African and Asian countries in “the South” we met and discussed over two days our conditions, our experience and how we can work to construct an Africa and an Asia where we can control our resources and make decisions in the interests of ordinary people.
I'm apprehensive- what can I, an academic, write about the World Social Forum (WSF) January 2007? This WSF in Nairobi was the first I had attended. I was invited by the Eastern Africa Coalition on Economic social and cultural rights under the Human rights caucus to discuss how evidence from research supports civil society efforts. I met several groups of people from all walks of life, and from all over the world – farmers, people living in slums, refugees, gay people, those fighting for the rights of the poor, and others. After my talk, a Civil Society Organization (CSO) leader came to me and said: “Mugisha, thank for your talk. We in civil society have the guns, but we lack bullets”. For a moment, I did not understand. Was he talking about a guerilla war? Later I understood him to mean that civil society have the platform, but lack the evidence to inform and sharpen their messages for maximum impact.