Brazzaville, 27 August 2007 -- WHO Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan, said in Brazzaville on Monday that obstacles holding back Africa’s health development must be overcome “on the most urgent basis possible.”

“Africa has far more than its fair share of disease, misery, and premature death. Much of this suffering is needless. Effective and affordable interventions exist to prevent or treat almost all the causes of ill health that plague Africa. This is the great social injustice … and this is the moral imperative that compels urgent action”, Dr Chan told a session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa which she was addressing for the first time in her capacity as WHO Director-General.

“The injustice is, indeed, devastating. It is also intolerable”, Dr Chan continued, pointing out that the Millennium Development Declaration and its accompanying Millennium Development Goals demonstrate a spirit of solidarity and fairness which have placed the health needs of Africa at the centre of the development agenda.

She explained that in addition to crumbling health systems in Africa, a multiplicity of external factors continued to make health delivery a veritable challenge in the region. These include often ineffective international aid; unkept promises; the abandonment of initiatives with shifting interest of donors; unpredictable funding; high transaction costs; and parallel systems for delivering a limited range of interventions at a time when the greatest need is for comprehensive basic care.

Dr Chan disclosed that on 5 September, the United Kingdom, in partnership with Norway, Germany and Canada, WHO and other major agencies working to improve health, will launch a new initiative, aimed at ensuring that resources work more efficiently to improve health outcomes. “It (the initiative) responds to many of the problems which arise when aid is unpredictable, uncoordinated, and constantly shifting; and respects the need for long-term flexible funding and support for country-led plans”, she said.

The Director –General stated that African countries must step up prevention, treatment and care for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria as well as find ways of circumventing the problem of weak delivery systems and shortages of staff. They should also simultaneously seek sustainable improvements and use traditional medicine and its practitioners in more effective and systematic ways.

She then proposed strategies for improving operational efficiency in integrating interventions into general health services and bringing them in line with the principles of primary health care.

These are:

• the management of overlapping interventions in an integrated manner;
• managing single diseases using a unified approach to avoid confusion and waste;
• making existing delivery systems work for more diseases;
• empowering women to realize their full potential, and
• using international instruments to strengthen collective defence against health threats that respect no boarders.

Dr Chan praised Africa’s leadership for its commitment to health development, saying that “for the first time we have political commitment, powerful interventions and proven strategies for their implementation.” She cited recent success stories in Africa such as the reduction in death from measles, “the impeccable management” of the Marburg haemorrhagic fever in Uganda in July and a 44% drop in malaria deaths in Kenya following a rigorously monitored campaign for the distribution of mosquito nets.

Dr Chan reiterated her commitment to improving the health situation in Africa saying: “I have made the health of Africa one of my priorities. Health outcomes in Africa are a measure of the overall effectiveness of WHO’s work.”

For more information contact:

Medias Contacts

Samuel T. Ajibola, + 47 241 39378; +242 6537022, ajibolas [at] afro.who.int

Flavienne Issembè, + 47 241 39352; +242 5385797; issembef [at] afro.who.int