The third meeting of the African Reproductive Health Task Force was opened in Harare, Zimbabwe, with a call on African countries and the international community at large to allocate more resources to reproductive health programmes with a view to stemming the tide of maternal and child deaths. "African health policies, including global health policies, have for a long time overlooked the need to allocate adequate resources to reproductive health programmes…and this has contributed to the massive numbers of maternal and newborn deaths", Zimbabwe's Minister of Health and Child Welfare, Dr David Parirenyatwa, told the meeting.
Equity in Health
Countries urged to allocate more resources to reproductive health
Making health systems more equitable
Health systems are consistently inequitable, providing more and higher quality services to the well-off who need them less than the poor who are unable to obtain them. In the absence of a concerted effort to ensure that health systems reach disadvantaged groups more effectively, such inequities are likely to continue. Yet these inequities need not be accepted as inevitable, for there are many promising measures that can be pursued, says this Lancet article.
Sant'Egidio ARV programme in Mozambique records success
Mozambique plans to have 8,000 people living with AIDS on free triple-therapy antiretroviral (ARV) treatment through its public health system by the end of the year. Although this is only a small proportion of the estimated 200,000 people in need of treatment, it is seen as a breakthrough for one of the world's poorest countries, where in the past ARVs were regarded as a luxury for Western countries only.
US fails to sign population agreement
Eighty-five countries last month signed a statement reaffirming commitment to reproductive health- and HIV/AIDS-related population and health goals agreed to 10 years ago at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, the AP/Philadelphia Inquirer reports. More than 250 world leaders - including presidents, prime ministers and Nobel Prize winners - endorsed the goals of ensuring a woman's right to education, health care and reproductive choices. Despite endorsement by the entire European Union, China, Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan and more than 12 African nations, the Bush administration refused to support the statement because it mentioned upholding "sexual rights" - a term that the administration says has no "agreed definition" in the international community.
Zambia: HIV funds from USAids, condoms banned in school
The U.S. Agency for International Development plans to give Zambia $24 million to combat AIDS and malaria and improve the quality of drinking water, the U.S. embassy in Lusaka, Zambia, said last Tuesday in a statement, the Associated Press reports. The money will be used to fund health education programs - coordinated by the government and the Society for Family Health - over the next six years. Zambia on Tuesday banned free condom distribution in schools just as USAID announced its funding for HIV/AIDS programs, with condom distribution a "key part of the strategy," Reuters reports.
Can we achieve health information for all by 2015?
This Lancet article calls on the WHO to take the lead in championing the goal of “Universal access to essential health-care information by 2015” or “Health Information for All”. Published to coincide with the launch of the Global Review of Access to Health Information in Developing Countries, the paper argues that access to information is key to meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). While many initiatives have improved access over the past ten years, there is still much to be done.
Humanitarian crisis crippling public health sector in Southern Africa
As a rising number of HIV/AIDS patients turn to already over-stretched public sector facilities, the ongoing humanitarian crisis is undermining the quality of care in Southern Africa's health system. Two years after committing themselves to respond to the humanitarian emergency, health ministers from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) are now faced with "vicious and destructive spirals" of rising HIV/AIDS deaths and deepening poverty, the World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional Office for Africa said in a statement.
New protocol for malnutrition management to save lives in Mozambique
Improved measures to tackle acute malnutrition in Mozambique are expected to save the lives of thousands of children and adults. During a five-day workshop supported by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) last week, about 100 health workers in the capital, Maputo, adopted a protocol outlining step-by-step guidelines for the management of acute malnutrition in children.
Poor Countries Footing Reproductive Health Bill
Developed countries are failing to live up to their commitments to fund sexual and reproductive health care leaving poorer countries to pick up the bill, says a new UN report. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report titled 'The Cairo Consensus at Ten: Population, Reproductive Health and the Global Effort to End Poverty' says poor countries themselves are providing around 40 percent of the money spent on reproductive health programmes and HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment.
Reviewing efforts to control TB
Global efforts to control rising levels of tuberculosis are not working and more needs to be done to reduce infections from the deadly airborne disease, public health experts said on Tuesday. The World Health Organization (WHO) introduced a strategy in 1993 aimed at halving deaths over the next decade from the contagious illness that kills about 2 million people each year. But researchers at Harvard University in the United States said a decade after the DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course) plan was introduced, the global burden of TB continues to rise.