Maravi

No development without healthy citizens

No development without healthy citizens
By The Post
Wed 27 Oct. 2010, 04:10 CAT

It is said that people are the greatest resource of every country. And this is true for us here in Zambia. Our people are indeed our greatest resource, our richest treasure, our best hope for the future. Yet today in Zambia, we hear of the frightening exhaustion of that resource, of its depletion, deterioration, exploitation.

We sadly note that this resource is being reduced amidst great suffering, a suffering which by and large seems to go unnoticed by those in power and is often inadequately responded to by government programmes.

We all know our people’s suffering. We are aware of, and we do commend, some efforts that are being made to improve the wellbeing of our people. But we feel that much more needs to be said and to be done if we are to meet effectively the massive problems of human suffering in our country today. We shouldn’t be silent in the face of this suffering of our people.

The word of God challenges us: “If you refuse to hear the cry of the poor, your own cry for help will not be heard” (Proverbs 21:13). We must speak out and call upon all people of goodwill to deal more forthrightly with this increasing suffering in our midst.

The enjoyment of the right to adequate standard of living entails adequate and equal access to health services for all. This requires an acknowledgement of the problems that beset our health services and the willingness to tackle them. Equality among citizens and the demands of justice call for policies which aim to provide health care for all without distinction.

Our government is today spending a very large percentage of the health budget in South African and Indian hospitals for just a few people who occupy high positions in government and other well connected people. Life is sacred. It is a gift from God to be valued from the moment of conception until death. Human beings can never be reduced to the status of objects.

Every person is of equal dignity. The value of life is not to be measured by one’s position in society. We appreciate the fact that absolute equality of access to health care for all citizens is difficult to achieve. However, this is an ideal which must always be striven for.

The guiding principle determining whether a patient will receive priority treatment ought not to be that patient’s apparent usefulness or the patient’s position in society. Rather, every person, whether rich or poor, educated or not, well connected or not, has equal right to receive health care. The practice of stealing, abusing and misapplying public funds from the Ministry of Health seriously threatens this right. At the same time, we are aware of the severe difficulties which our health services are experiencing at present.

Without doubt, the most serious problem is the acute shortage of health centres to cater for the population. One cannot claim to uphold the principle of the sanctity of life if provision has not been made for even minimal health care for every person. This is a priority which we cannot ignore if you wish to be a caring and compassionate nation. It must be recognised that if this problem is to be tackled, it will demand the allocation of more resources from the state and ensure that they are not stolen or squandered.

While we greatly value the generous dedication to service of many of those who work in the medical field, we cannot ignore that the quality of medical care is often seriously inadequate. We have patients being unattended to for long periods of time; the failure to recognise each patient as one’s brother or sister in need. We therefore urge all our health workers to serve every patient without exception with responsibility and true dedication. There is no future development without healthy citizens.

The right to development is the right to integral development. Integral development means the development of the whole person and of every person. Everyone has the right to life. And in its wide interpretation, the right to life means that the state is required to take such positive measures as to reduce infant mortality, to increase life expectancy and to eliminate malnutrition and epidemics.

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for health and wellbeing of oneself and one’s family, including medical care in the event of sickness. But the right to live a dignified life can never be attained unless all basic necessities of life – health care, education, food, housing, work, culture – are adequately and equitably available to everyone. The right to health care implies that everyone has the right to medical care when sick.

This obliges the government to create conditions in which every person has access to medical services and attention in the event of sickness. This right obliges the government to provide enough funds for preventative health care and basic health care assistance. This right extends to the preventative aspect of health care. This includes improved nutrition, sanitation, immunisation, education on health, improvement of all aspects of environmental and industrial hygiene.

This right also obliges the government to pay special attention to epidemic, endemic and occupational diseases. AIDS is an example of such an epidemic. There should be a strengthening of policies oriented at prevention, control and treatment of such epidemics. This right also obliges the government to pay special attention to the improvement of health conditions to the children. There should be provisions for reduction of the still-birth rate and infant mortality.

The call on our government by World Health Organisation African regional director Dr Luis Sambo to allocate adequate resources to the health sector needs to be heeded if we are to meet the millennium development goals four and five. We have to be clear about priorities and where we have to do more. Millennium development goals four and five – improving women and children’s health care – are the goals against which progress has been most disappointing.

Reducing the number of women that die in childbirth is a major challenge. It is a concern for the lives and welfare of women and children what will help drive and provide public support for the health millennium development goals. We cannot deliver better outcomes without better health systems. And to achieve this, we need a leadership that provides clear direction and harnesses the energies of all. The purpose of the millennium development goals is to reduce poverty. And it is said that to miss poverty is to miss the point.

Poverty is both a cause and an outcome of all forms of ill-health. Health is an outcome of all policies. And if we have to sustain this, we have to start relying less and less on external resources because that is not sustainable. We are currently too dependent on donors for the provision of health services to our people while we waste the money contributed by our taxpayers on endless trips abroad, allowances, and so on and so forth. Again, there can be no future development without healthy citizens.

Labels: HEALTHCARE

posted by MrK @ 2:35 PM