[afro-nets] Appeal to AU member States to implement 2001 Abuja pledge to allocate 15% of national budgets to health

["Rotimi" <rotimi@credonet.org>]

Appeal to AU member States to implement 2001 Abuja pledge to allocate 15% of national budgets to health
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Dear Colleagues,

Following the launch of the African Union 15% petition on Human Rights Day, kindly find the link to the said petition on the AFRO-NETS website:
http://afronets.org/pubview.php/120/

Please urge everyone to appreciate that we are not asking the Heads of States and governments of the African Union member states for a favour. We are asking them to commit public funds to saving the lives of the public - through improved and targeted investment in public health care. We should underline that its a commitment they made themselves and 5 years later only 1 of 53 countries (Gambia) can arguably say that it has met it. Even then Gambia ( and all other countries that fulfil the pledge) will need to sustain this in a targeted and monitored manner over a number of years focusing on health worker shortages and preventive medicine etc (even scaling up to over 15% if possible)  to begin to see the impact. This means we will still have to engage policy makers after the 15% allocations to make sure they are not empty gestures.

We should also urge as many groups as we can at country level to join/support the campaign especially health workers and their organisations and larger civil society. Our best bet to create a continental (and global movement) is to ensure that those of us with a health advocacy consciousness, together with health workers - link irrevocably with the rest of civil society. We are all potential victims here. All Africans that have not already experienced the sorrow of preventable loss of life will soon suffer this if we cannot improve the situation within a few years at most. The prevailing 'official' idea in Africa that public health is a personal matter must end sooner than latter.

With 8 million+ Africans dying every year from preventable, treatable or manageable health conditions its fair to say that we should make the point that all African governments will soon have no legitimacy  - if all they will be doing is presiding over the first global scenario of genocide by governmental inaction. No other budget allocation is useful if citizens of our countries have all died. 

We urge you to put your all into this campaign and help create an African and global movement to end this cycle of misery and death.  We have all been involved in many campaigns but I have no doubt that while all campaigns have their usefulness the right to health and to life itself is at the core of everything.

As a next step and as a build up to the AU petition, we propose to circulate a draft letter to the AU Ambassadors/ Permanent Representative Council and the Executive Council (foreign ministers) sometime next week urging them to ensure the 15% commitment is on the summit Agenda. The PRC sorts agenda issues with the Executive Council before the summit so we need to do this to maximise the impact of the petition to the Heads of State. Otherwise the petition may well turn out to be a symbolic gesture if they don't have it on the agenda - which is a sad possibility. 

Global Events
For colleagues that may not have noted (post World Social Forum and AU summit) the first global event on the horizon is the April IFM/World Bank spring meetings where we need to make the case for ending the imposed expenditure ceilings preventing many countries from allocating adequate resources to healthcare. In addition to launching the IMF petition at WSF, we hope to conduct advocacy at the meetings alongside our global partners based on country level research which we hope to have ready. Could colleagues in affected countries and the global colleagues especially give this some thought to see how we can best go about this.

Communications
As more people join up, communication may become an issue so Dapo has created a yahoo groups list for partners to ease communication difficulties. Kindly respond to the notifications. We may also have to look at creating an open global list for mobilising the bigger movement as it grows.

Also as colleagues are joining at various stages please feel free to send Dapo or myself a message to clarify issues if you need to, so we can limit the partners inbox traffic to strategy, methodology and information exchange issues. In addition to contributing on general strategy, we would want to appeal for contributions on areas of specialty (HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria; Reproductive Rights; Children's Health, Public Health etc) especially in the context of the 3 health based MDG's and Universal Access targets.

Thanks again to all and best wishes

Rotimi

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