Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9503211921.A15786-0100000@nywork2.undp.org> Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 19:21:52 -0500 From: Mike Gurstein <mailto:mikeg@NYWORK2.UNDP.ORG> Subject: HEALTH: Race to Bring ''Health For All'' By 2000 (fwd) To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L
Why not some good news for a change.Mike Gurstein
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 00:32:34 -0500 From: Nyanchama Matunda <mailto:matunda@gaul.csd.uwo.ca> To: mailto:africa-l@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu, soc-summit@ssi.edc.org Cc: mailto:soc.culture.african@newshost.uwo.ca Subject: HEALTH: Race to Bring ''Health For All'' By 2000 (fwd)
|> Originator: mailto:misa-news@wn.apc.org
|> From: Inter Press Service Harare <mailto:ipshre@gn.apc.org>
|> To: Multiple recipients of list <mailto:misa-news@wn.apc.org>
|> Subject: HEALTH: Race to Bring ''Health For All'' By 2000
|>
|> HEALTH: Race to Bring ''Health For All'' By 2000
|>
|> By Michael Keats
|>
|> GENEVA, MAR 20 (IPS) - For the World Health Organization (WHO),
|> battling to achieve its avowed aim of ''Health for All'' by the
|> year 2000, it's a case of ''win some, lose some.''
|>
|> The good news is the world stands on the brink of global
|> eradication of poliomyeltis.
|>
|> WHO this month intensified a polio immunisation drive, run
|> jointly with the UN Children's Education Fund (UNICEF), to reach
|> this goal.
|>
|> World Health Day will be observed on April 7 with at least 15
|> countries in Europe and the eastern Mediterranean providing
|> polio vaccine to children in a simultaneous operation.
|>
|> The whole area of the western Pacific is on the brink of
|> being declared polio-free.
|>
|> In other areas, Michel Jancloes, director of WHO's Division
|> for Intensified Cooperation with Countries in Greatest Need
|> (ICO) says progress is being made in developing the capacity of
|> governments for health planning and managing aid.
|>
|> ICO extended its activities in the majority of the 48 poorest
|> countries of the world and was pushing health onto the economic
|> agenda of these nations, Jancloes said in an interview with IPS.
|>
|> While who maintains ''there can be no social development or
|> sustained economic growth without health,'' the not-so-good news
|> was that this issue slid into the background of discussions at
|> the recent World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen.
|>
|> The ICO approach of producing regular macroeconomics, health
|> and development guidelines for least-developed countries,
|> however, is paying off, Janloes said.
|>
|> some examples:
|>
|> - In war-devastated Mozambique, ICO helped the government
|> prepare an integrated health plan for Manica Province and
|> negotiated a 12-year support agreement by finland worth 20
|> million dollars.
|>
|> - WHO opened the first field offices in Latin America -- in
|> five areas of Quiche and Huehuetenango in Guatemala -- to bring
|> basic health services to about one million desperately poor
|> indians.
|>
|> - In Guinea-Bissau, more effective management schemes,
|> produced through ICO, have increased the immunisation of
|> children by 45 percent in targeted areas -- among the poorest in
|> the world.
|>
|> - A national health insurance system is currently being set
|> up in Vietnam to make health care accessible to the country's
|> poorest people. Similar schemes are planned for Bolivia, China,
|> Mongolia and Zambia.
|>
|> These, and other projects, have been produced on a current
|> ICO budget of 15 million dollars while estimates for 1996/1997
|> put the total budget at 18 million -- minute compared with the
|> overall WHO budget of 1.8 billion, but sustaining even this
|> level of funding is a matter of major concern for ICO.
|>
|> The division's latest report shows that regular budget
|> support, as a proportion of total core funding, has dropped from
|> 50 percent to about 25 percent.
|>
|> Still its small budget can have a multiplier effect by
|> achieving more effective use of billions of dollars in existing
|> bilateral aid.
|>
|> ''Governments must be enabled to identify their needs and
|> draw up their own health policies, and donors must be persuaded
|> to integrate their funding into these plans,'' Janloes said.
|>
|> ''This is the key to our approach... helping developing
|> countries use better their own resources. They simply cannot
|> absorb some of the aid donors would have them receive, there
|> just isn't the infrastructure.''
|>
|> An example of this, he said, is when a grant for a hospital
|> in Bangladesh would provide a salary for some physicians 35
|> times higher than the prevailing salary of other local medical
|> personnel.
|>
|> ''We prefer to see money used to boost the standing of nurses
|> and midwives -- to put them in a position of respect when
|> talking to others,'' Jancloes said. ''After all, in the poorer
|> countries we are talking about, it's the nurses and midwives who
|> provide the major health care.''
|>
|> In tailoring the health services to the needs of developing
|> countries, Jancloes again stressed the link between health and
|> economic development. A programme to control the spread of
|> river blindness, a fly borne disease prevalent in West Africa,
|> has made 24 million hectares of land available for farming.
|>
|> Other factors to improve health services may depend more on
|> the availability of fuel and power and good roads than on
|> providing hospitals and medical staff, he said.
|> (end/ips/mk/PdaC/95)
|>