The 7th Global Conference on Health Promotion: President Kibaki urges more resources for African health challenges
Nairobi, 26 October 2009 -- The 7th Global Conference on Health Promotion, openedi on Monday 26 October 2009 at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre in Nairobi. His Excellency President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya called on African leaders to find innovative ways to mobilize resources to finance priority health programmes.
The conference, the first of its kind to be held on the continent of Africa and attended by over 500 delegates from around the world, has adopted the theme ‘Promoting Health and development, Closing the implementation gap. Declaring the conference open, the Kenyan President said that holding the conference in Africa was a demonstration of the commitment to addressing the health challenges facing the continent.
President Kibaki pointed out that there is one maternal death every minute and charged the conference to identify ways to accelerate agreed strategies targeting maternal and new born health. He appealed for multisectoral collaboration in and the creation of alliances between state and private sectors to address health challenges.
Speaking on behalf of WHO Director General, Dr Margaret Chan, the Regional Director for Africa, Dr Luis Gomes Sambo, noted that health promotion was being discussed in the face of new global challenges to health such as emerging pathogens, climate change and the economic downturn. Emphasizing the importance of implementation ‘in a world of high promises and unmet goals', Dr Sambo said that Maternal Mortality in Africa remained one of many poor marks in the implementation scorecard of the MDGs.
"People's health is affected by different determinants such as income, employment, access to health services, basic education, water and sanitation, housing, gender, culture, life-styles and other biological, social and economic factors", he noted, adding that he wants to see health promotion take a more prominent role in the implementation of primary health care and in responding to the health needs of people.
The Regional Director further called for leadership to ensure the health dimension of public policies are directed towards making health care universally accessible and people-centered. He also urged delegates to reflect and propose actions to accelerate global and local efforts towards cost-effective and more equitable access to health care and better quality of life.
The opening sessions of the conference have seen many speakers expressing a strong feeling that it was high time for words to be translated into action towards improving health systems. It was emphasized that health promotion should play a vital role in primary health care to ensure universal access to equitable and affordable healthcare.
Supporting this view, Prof Sir Marmot, former Chair of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health observed that ‘social injustice is killing people on a grand scale'. He said that ensuring social justice makes economic sense and also has a moral dimension. ‘We have the resources, but do we have the political will, he asked.
The 7th Global Conference on Health Promotion is a joint conference hosted by the Government of Kenya and the World Health Organization with support from a number of countries, development partners and charitable organizations.