Maravi

Donors’ freeze of aid to MoH is a crisis – Luo

COMMENT - Start taxing the mines. Unless of course they have made 'friends' in such high places that they can never be imposed upon. Politicians will have to make a choice. How many of their own people are they willing to see die, before the bribes they have taken from the mines are no longer worth it.

Donors’ freeze of aid to MoH is a crisis – Luo
Written by Chibaula Silwamba
Sunday, May 24, 2009 4:15:03 PM

FORMER minister of health Professor Nkandu Luo yesterday said the freezing of financial support to the Ministry of Health by the Swedish and the Dutch governments is a crisis. And Prof Luo said the government's decision to purchase 100 hearses is not normal because they were From front page preparing people to die instead of improving their health status to enable them contribute to national development.

Commenting on the decision by the Swedish government - through the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) - and the Dutch/Netherlands government's decision to suspend their financial support to the Ministry of Health following allegations of theft of K10 billion [about US $2 million] by some ministry officials, Prof Luo said the implication of the donors' decision was serious and would compromise the health of the people.

"It has got very serious implications and it gives a lot of sad reading because you can't compromise the health of people and my opinion is that the government needs to really address themselves to this decision and whatever issue they have raised with them, they need to take care of them so that the support can be restored," Prof Luo said.

"For Zambia, if there is that decision by donors, it's a crisis and it's important that those that are making decisions should sit down and address the concerns of the donors and deal with them. If I were one of the decision makers, I would actually call a crisis meeting and say, 'Look! We have a crisis. What are the issues? Let us address them and restore the support to the Ministry of Health.' Yes, it is a crisis."

She said the Dutch government was one of the key financiers to the Ministry of Health and the health sector as the whole.

"From what I know both the drug package and everything, in fact The Netherlands government is the biggest supporter, for example TB [Tuberculosis] drugs etcetera. DFID [Department for International Development of the United Kingdom] is now the lead donor in the health sector. So if those people pull out, then there is a problem," said Prof Luo in an interview.

She said the donors contributed a lot of money to the Ministry of Health and if they withheld their support, then the Zambian government would have serious problems to finance the activities in the health sector.

"There is very little money coming from our government. Go to the Yellow Book and Parliament and see how much money is coming from donors to the health sector. The Yellow Book speaks for itself that the majority of money going into the health sector is all coming from outside support. It's simple and basic!" Prof Luo said. "I mean if you look at HIV/AIDS activities most of the money is from the Global Fund, from bilateral donors, it's coming from the Americans. There is very little money which is not coming from outside support to support these activities."

Prof Luo said various donors had their own priority areas of support in the health sector.

"It depends on the donors; some donors put their money into infrastructure development like the Japanese. They do support infrastructure development, the EU they go into infrastructure development. The Dutch money goes more into drugs especially in relation to tuberculosis, they have always supported that," she said. "Right now, HIV/AIDS is one of the biggest challenges that we have in the country."

Prof Luo said the Zambian government had not honoured the Abuja and Bamako agreements to increase its budgetary allocation to the health sector.

The Dutch government on Thursday announced that it had suspended aid to Zambia's health sector following corruption allegations.

The Netherlands contributes about 13 million Euros [about K92 billion] annually for the funding of rural health care provision, the prevention of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV, and the training of medical staff in Zambia.

The decision by the Netherlands government to suspend aid follows the move by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) to stop its planned release of funds to the Ministry of Health following the alleged K10 billion scam unearthed by the ACC.

Recently, the ACC unearthed a corruption scam in which over K10 billion government funds were suspected to have been corruptly obtained from the Ministry of Health.

And Prof Luo wondered why the government opted to purchase hearses instead of improving the health facilities in the country to ensure that people were healthy and productive.

"I mean how do you have a situation where you start buying hearses? What sort of decisions are those? It means that you want people to be dying," Prof Luo said. "You have now provided them with the vehicles to be carrying the dead bodies instead of saying, 'we want to keep people healthy therefore, we are going to put more drugs in the hospitals, we are going to increase our public health activities and preventive measures, we are going to purchase ambulances so that when people are sick they are quickly rushed to the health institution'."

She said it was unfortunate that the government had misplaced priorities.

"You decide to purchase hearses so that people can die and you take them to the mortuary. That is not a normal decision because any normal decision is that they [decision makers] would like to ensure the health of their people because when the people are healthy then they are productive and when they are productive they are going to contribute to the development of the nation but if you decide that 'let them die', I don't know what sort of the decision that is. So who is going to contribute to the productivity of this country because we are all now being prepared to die," said Prof Luo.

Labels: DONORS, MINISTRY OF HEALTH, NKANDU LUO

posted by MrK @ 3:18 PM