Register for African ambassadors seeking international help for women's health in Africa
Women's HealthMay 16, 2004
2004 MAY 16 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- African ambassadors urged governments and donors to intensify efforts to improve women's health in Africa during an afternoon of dialogue at the World Bank headquarters in Washington DC, on April 13, 2004.
"We encourage the World Bank to lead and coordinate the initiative to harmonize approaches to health in Africa, which could lead to a Common Trust Fund, training programs, and efforts to reverse the brain drain from Africa, notably among medical professionals," said Usha Jeetah, ambassador of Mauritius.
"Women's health is not just about health. It is a broader development issue with far-reaching economic, health, and human rights implications that must be addressed if Africa is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)", said Callisto Madavo, the Africa regional vice president of the World Bank. Six of the eight MDGs - halving extreme poverty, advancing gender equity, curbing maternal and child mortality, arresting the spread of HIV/AIDS, and providing universal education by 2015 - are unattainable without improving women's health in Africa.
"Unprecedented levels of resources are needed from governments, donors, and civil society collaborating through an innovative and effective partnership to prevent diarrhea from claiming 800,000 children before their fifth birthday and malaria from killing one million Africans a year," said Amadou Lamine Ba, ambassador of Senegal.
"Under-age and forced marriages, adolescent pregnancy, illegal and unsafe abortion, unattended deliveries, and the lack of emergency obstetric care are among some of the most serious causes of maternal mortality on the continent," said Khama Rogo, the World Bank's lead Health Sector specialist.
Meeting attendees were briefed on key facts about women's health in Africa. One in 20 African women die in labor, compared to 1 in 4,000 women in Europe. One in eight children born today in countries like Angola, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, will die in pregnancy. For every African boy infected with HIV/AIDS, there are six girls. In the last 20 years, Africa has made little or no progress in lowering child and maternal mortality, in advancing family planning, and in ending genital mutilation, still practiced in 28 African countries. To compound this, severe shortages of doctors, nurses, and skilled midwives, accentuated by the brain drain, underpin health system failures in Africa.
"At least 60% of all Ghanaian doctors trained during the 1980s left the country and some 600 South African doctors trained over the 1998-2002 period at a total cost of $37 million migrated to New Zealand," reported Mamphela Ramphele, the World Bank's managing director.
Comparing the state of health of the African woman to standards in pre-historic Europe, Ramphele said, "It is a scandal and a challenge to the entire world that pervasive poor health should exact such a staggering human and development toll on Africa."
"Understanding and influencing the politics of sexuality is key to advancing women's health in Africa," said Yolanda Richardson, president of CEDPA, a civil society organization with 25 years of experience in women reproductive health, safe motherhood, and HIV/AIDS in Africa.
This is especially important for Africa, where 29% of teenagers between ages 15 and 19 are sexually active; where 50% of women are sexually active between the ages of 20 and 24; and where between 10% to 25% of unmarried adolescents have had children or are pregnant.
Developing women's leadership, building capacity for their institutions, and supporting social mobilization in support of women's health were cited by CEDPA's president as key components in her organization's strategy to promote women's health in Africa.
Keeping children, notably girls, in schools; raising the levels of contraceptive use (currently 13% among married women in Africa compared to 62% in Latin America); advancing health education; and involving men, notably young boys, as active partners were some of the solutions suggested during the dialogue.
"Promoting women's health is consistent with advancing the broader agenda of women's empowerment," said Louis Kasekende, the World Bank's executive director for the Africa region.
Studies show that if African women practiced appropriate birth spacing, they would be 1.3 times more likely to avoid anemia, 1.7 times more likely to avoid third-trimester bleeding, and 2.5 times more likely to survive childbirth. In a country like Kenya, where 48% of 15- to 19-year-old adolescent mothers said they had unattended births, mortality of children under age 5 would drop by 17%.
"No other area of development currently prioritized by the MDGs, donors, or African governments within the framework of the NEPAD [New Partnership for Africa's Development] initiative is more urgent and important than women's health," stated Usha Jeetah, ambassador of Mauritius.
The group of 35 African ambassadors accredited to Washington, DC, envisage several follow-up activities to the dialogue on "Harmonizing Approaches to Health in Africa." These include advocacy on the part of the ambassadors to ensure that African leaders champion this agenda and that it is taken beyond mere mention in the NEPAD initiative to action on the field. The ambassadors will advocate concrete and urgent action within their respective countries while building effective partnerships with donors to advance women's health in Africa as a key condition for achieving the MDGs. This article was prepared by Medical Letter on the CDC & FDA editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2004, Medical Letter on the CDC & FDA via NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net.
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