AMREF's message to leaders at the 15th African Union Summit in Kampala, Uganda
19th July, 2010
The Situation
The biggest threat to the lives of teenage girls and young women in the developing world is pregnancy and childbirth.
According to the World Health Organization, a woman living in sub-Saharan Africa faces a lifetime risk of dying due to pregnancy of 1 in 16 (compared with 1 in 30,000 in Western Europe). And for every woman who dies, another 20 suffer from illness and disability, like obstetric fistula, which without surgery to repair it leaves its victims incontinent social outcasts. This is the greatest health inequality in the world. More than 250,000 (of the 536,000) deaths among women and girls every year as a result of complications during pregnancy and childbirth are among African women. Sadly, Africa also contributes 60 percent of the 9 million children under-five who die globally every year.
In most African countries the maternal and child death rates are actually getting worse, and it is unlikely that Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 (reducing child and maternal deaths by 75 percent by 2015 respectively) will be achieved without urgent action.
Call to African Leaders
AMREF has been working for 53 years with communities to empower them to know more about their health and be able to demand better services from health facilities and providers. AMREF will continue to work to improve the linkages between communities and health facilities by increasing access to health information and providing communities with better knowledge of their health and health needs.
Recently, G8 leaders made a fresh commitment to invest US$5 billion to reduce maternal and child deaths in developing countries. African leaders should meet their commitment made 11 years ago through the Abuja Declaration (2001). African governments agreed to set aside 15 percent of national budgets to go towards health spending.
AMREF urges African governments to make the 15 percent investment and focus expenditure in health on reducing maternal and child deaths through:
- Ensuring that there are skilled health workers in every facility
- Providing adequate equipment, supplies and commodities for maternal and child health
- Offering free-of-charge services at point of delivery
- Integrating PMTCT in all maternal and child health services (since HIV is one of the main contributors to maternal and child deaths in Africa), including treatment for mothers and their families.
