With just over a decade left before the Millennium Development Goals become due, the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO) are warning that millions of the worlds poorest people will continue to suffer from death and ill health unless the international development community can do much more to help developing countries reach their health-related MDGs.
The health-related MDGs call on developing countries to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters and child mortality by two-thirds, halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger, combat HIV-AIDS, malaria and other infectious diseases, and improve access to safe drinking water and essential drugs.
And yet according to a new draft Bank report “the scale of death and ill health in the world is staggering…a burden that is heavily concentrated in the world’s poorest countries.
According to the report, titledThe Millennium Development Goals for Health written by HD Network Health specialists Adam Wagstaff and Mariam Claesson, poor health often means death and illness in many developing countries.
In 2000, 11 million children died before their fifth birthdays, 99 percent of them in poor countries; more than half a million women die each year during childbirth, 252.000 in Sub-Saharan alone; and last year, more than three million people died from HIV-AIDS, another two million fell victim to the consumptive ordeal of tuberculosis.
One of the problems in reaching the goals, said WHO Director General, Jong-wook Lee, is that everyone is waiting for someone else to take the lead, and in the meantime, the years are passing by too quickly.
– When the world sets these targets for 2015, it seems too soon to take urgent action, and then, after a few short years, it seems too late. And when you need everyone on board to reach the targets, you can end up with the hazard of everyone waiting for everyone else to risk making the first move. We still have time to avoid these pitfalls with the targets for 2015, but to do so we have to act now, addede the Director General.
Jean-Louis Sarbib, the World Banks Senior Vice President for Human Development told delegates they have to come up with an action plan of concrete steps that is equal to the task. It is not enough, he says, to go home with a wonderful sounding final communiqué, and a feeling that the world is now better off as a result.
A recurring theme at the Forum, said Sarbib, has focused on the need for developing countries to take full account of the MDGs in devising their Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), and to set macroeconomic frameworks that combine the need for stability with spending at the scale needed to achieve the MDGs on time.
– There are still some key areas around the health goals where we are grappling with what to do, said Nigerias Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
– There is still the debate on getting extra aid from rich country donors, how we do financing within our own countries, and most of all, on monitoring, results, and effectiveness. How do we measure results at the country level when some of these MDGs will take a long time to see outcomes? How do we devise country-level monitoring that is consistent across all countries? It is very difficult.
Other developing country ministers describe the obstacles they see to reaching the health goals. According to Indias Health Minister, JVR Prasada Rao, aid donors have to concentrate less on quick wins in developing countries, and take their money and expertise into remote, rural areas where poor people need the most help with maternal and child mortality issues.
Ghanas Minister of Health Dr. Kwaku Afriyie argues that donors need to make their aid more predictable and flexible, and not go up and down depending on the government in power.
He also says that countries like his own are still waiting for the billions of dollars in additional aid promised by the donors in Monterrey to help countries with sound policies and programs in place to reach the MDGs and beyond.
But he goes on to say that empowering women more fully may be one of the biggest steps countries can make towards getting themselves to the 2015 health targets.
– You know the saying that if you educate a man, you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a whole nation? he states.
– I take my inspiration from that. Most of the healthcare that poor people get is provided outside of the hospitals and in the home, provided by women. An educated woman and mother is an asset in health and also economic growth. I call female empowerment the mother of all MDGs, added the minister.
Kilde: Verdensbankens hjemmeside, www.worldbank.org
