By KT Reporter
Health Ministers attending the Africa Health Summit have recommitted to the 2001 Abuja declaration, promising to commit 15 per cent of their national budgets to health.
The overall goal is to achieve Universal Health Coverage – to have everyone access quality health services without suffering financial hardship.
All the countries at the meeting have so far failed to live up to this commitment, made in April 2001 during the African Summit on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and other related infectious diseases, where they all pledged to allocate at least 15% of their annual budgets to the health sector.
Speaking at the latest summit held in Kampala on Friday, Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, the Minister of Health, said to be able to achieve the health targets, countries need to become more self-reliant, pointing out the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals as one of the areas they need to give urgent attention.
She said African countries have, for instance, already agreed to increase local production of vaccines to satisfy sixty percent of the continental need.
Aceng said countries cannot do this by competing and manufacturing similar products, but need collaboration to determine what each country can produce and buy from each other. She said the Tanzanian government is purchasing mosquito nets from Uganda.
Joash Arthur Maangi, the High Commissioner of Kenya to Uganda, who was representing the Kenyan Health Minister, said the country is currently allocating 10 percent of its budget to health but is working to ensure it reaches the 15 percent by 2030, as this is part of their universal health coverage agenda.
Maangi was speaking in a discussion by a panel of ministers of health of South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Rwanda, where each of them recommitted to working towards achieving the 15 percent target by 2030.
Meanwhile, countries are still too far from achieving the Abuja commitment; chances of some achieving this in the next four years to 2030 are slim. Uganda has only 7 per cent of the national budget allocated to health.
With only two percent of the budget going to health in South Sudan, 7.2 percent in Ethiopia, and 1.3 percent in Somalia, it’s only Rwanda that’s on track to hit this target, as they currently allocate 13.5 percent of their national budget to health.
But Dr Kennedy Gaaniko Baime, the Under Secretary in the South Sudan Ministry of Health, said despite the challenges, they re-commit to the Abuja declaration.
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