Africans Forego Basics to Save Children – Charity
Date: 13-Dec-05
Country: UK
Author: Patricia Reaney
Save the Children UK, which conducted research in seven African nations, found that poor families were forced to sell livestock, mortgage crops and take children out of school to cover healthcare costs.
"Parents across sub-Saharan Africa are being forced to decide whether the rest of the family should go without food to send a sick child to a clinic or hospital. It's a choice no parent should ever have to make," said Anna Taylor, head of health at the charity.
She added that the findings, which were released ahead of an international conference on child survival in London on Tuesday, reveal the need for long-term investment in healthcare systems in Africa.
"African governments should be free to decide whether to drop health fees, but this will not happen without guarantees for long-term support from donors such as the World Bank. With such support, millions of children's lives could be saved," she added in a statement.
PREVENTABLE DISEASES
About 11 million children die each year from mainly preventable diseases like malaria, measles, diarrhoea and pneumonia, according to the charity.
It estimates that if healthcare fees were abolished in 20 countries in Africa, the lives of 250,00 children under the age of five could be saved.
Save the Children UK believes essential health services in the poorest countries in Africa should be free. It is urging the World Bank, donors and UN agencies to support African nations which want to scrap fees for essential health services.
The findings were based on five years of research in Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. It looked at the cost of healthcare, how families coped and the impact on households.
"Thirty-four percent of the population, when they were ill, were not seeking treatment. One of the biggest reasons for that was the cost of services," Regina Keith, a senior health advisor for the charity, said in an interview.
"People were selling off land, cows and finite assets, things that were not renewable," she added.
The research coincides with the start of a conference "Countdown 2015: Tracking Progress in Child Survival" which begins on Tuesday.
Public health experts, researchers and government ministers will attend the meeting which has been organised on behalf of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Save the Children, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and other groups.