Africa must do for self in tuberculosis fight
A World Health Organization (WHO) report revealed that significant progress toward eradicating tuberculosis (TB) globally was achieved in the last two decades. TB is a common and often deadly infectious disease spread through the air, when people who have the disease cough or sneeze. Usually it attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body. TB usually starts as an asymptomatic, latent infection that becomes an active disease, which untreated, kills more than half of its victims.
A woman, left, cuts the hair of a fellow tuberculosis patient at a clinic in the township of Khayelitsha, on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa, March 24, 2011. Over two million people will contract a form of tuberculosis by 2015 that is difficult to treat, said the World Health Organization.
The WHO 2011 Global Tuberculosis Control Report, said the number of TB cases fell to 8.8 million in 2010 from a peak of nine million in 2005. However experts said the gains are jeopardized by world economic downturns and funding challenges, especially in Africa.
Because of current economic constraint and hardship on Western donor nations, there is a financial domino effect impacting developing countries in their goals to manage the disease. According to statistics, most low-income countries are heavily dependent on external aid for controlling TB.
The single largest source of domestic finance for TB is national governments and projected to be 87 percent worldwide for 2012. However, the leading source of outside funding to countries fighting TB is The Global Fund—established specifically to battle AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. The Fund has invested in large-scale prevention, treatment, and care programs against the three diseases in 150 countries. Since its creation in 2002, the Fund has become the main financier of such efforts, allocating $21.7 billion worth of funding around the world to date.
The report said the TB death rate dropped 40 per cent between 1990 and 2010, and all regions, except Africa, are on track to achieve a 50 percent decline in mortality by 2015. However, a concern about distribution of funds, accountability and transparency in recipient nations has become a problem in some cases.
On October 19 The Global Fund announced it suspended a $28 million grant to the West African nation of Mali after investigators allegedly found evidence of financial misappropriation. In a statement, The Fund said it will shelve financing all but essential services under the grant until a new structure is formulated to manage the money. In December 2010, Corte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Mauritania and Papua New Guinea were subjected to special measures and closer scrutiny of their grant activities.
“This decision is not the right way to work together as partners.” said Dr. Youssouf Diallo from Mali’s High Council for the Fight against AIDS. He called the decision premature and said the Council had not been shown any of the evidence against it.
But Notwithstanding, the WHO highlighted success stories like Kenya and Tanzania where proactive efforts yielded a decline in their TB burden over the last decade after cresting from an HIV-AIDS epidemic. But, the most dramatic change for TB death rates is China where the numbers dwindled nearly 80 percent from 216,000 in 1990 to 55,000 in 2010.
Dependency—the major problem
Observers agree, the numbers are impressive but question their sustainability in a climate of domestic austerity and increased turmoil in donor nations. Furthermore there are questions of priority for donor nations that are still investing in and extracting Africa’s resources despite issues like funding TB eradication.
Some analysts see African self-determination and eliminating dependency on foreign aid as the best solution to the problem. Deitric Muhammad, Chief Economist at MGE19 Economic Research & Structural Models, opines that Africa must accept the challenge and do for itself.
In an opinion piece posted on ModernGhana.com Mr. Muhammad raised the point, “What will African economies do once the U.S. dollar and the euro collapse? African economies are in a very vulnerable position because of their artificial dependency on external economies including China,” he wrote.
“Those who control the resources of Africa will become the next superpower for the 21st Century.” According to Ugandan “New Vision” newspaper, Ben Turok, former anti-apartheid activist, a South Africa Parliamentarian and Chairperson of the Network of African Parliamentarians warned that no amount of aid from multinational institutions like the World Bank would redeem the continent, unless African countries exploit their own natural resources.
In a paper titled ‘Move from Aid Effectiveness to Development Effectiveness’ during the 5th Ordinary Session of the Pan-African Parliament in South Africa, Mr. Turok said a focus on the economy over time would make the continent self-sufficient and less dependent on foreign aid. He cited that Africa collected $400 billion in taxes in 2008, ten times more than the amount in aid received during that year. In addition, African banks were holding $669 billion in assets, equivalent to what all the banks in Russia possessed.
In light of the total global outlook, even where some progress exists, it is self sufficiency backed by a strong economy that allows for true empowerment for TB eradication and other major quality of life challenges in Africa.
In the world of donors, the Global Fund contributions have been increasing since 2004, and expected to reach $362 million in 2012. In comparison sponsorship from other donor sources is expected to reach only $86 million for next year and government projections for 2012 have reported a $1 billion shortfall for carrying out TB-related activities.
“This is completely inadequate … when you consider that the funding gap for meeting the 2012 implementation targets of the Global Plan to Stop TB remains $2 billion. This, without adding the significant gap for research and development of more than $1 billion,” said Dr. Lucica Ditiu, Executive Secretary at Stop TB Partnership, a Geneva, Switzerland based organization dedicated to the treatment and eradication of TB.
Dr. Ditiu commended the report as positive, but far from implying triumph over the debilitating disease that affect nine million each year.
“As long as we have three people that die with TB every minute and 10 million children in the world who have been orphaned because a parent died of TB, we cannot afford to declare victory just yet,” she said in a statement on the organization’s website. Dr. Ditiu said it can’t be overlooked that in the total numbers of TB victims, three million cases go neither undetected nor treated and almost 1.5 million people are dying from the curable disease.
Health care in Africa can be financed by Africans if they disconnect themselves from the collapsing currency markets of Europe and America and connect their currency to the land, backed by a monetized commodity like gold for example. When the US dollar and the euro falls, the world markets are going down with them, including China—the largest holder of US debt said Mr. Muhammad.
“Is there a sudden interest in the people of Africa or in the resources of Africa? Well, if it is the control of the resources of Africa that will make the prospective nations the next superpower in the 21st Century, should not Africa control its own resources and become the 21st Century’s next superpower?” wrote Mr. Muhammad.
By Brian E. Muhammad
FinalCall.com
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/World_News_3/article_8362.shtml
