[afro-nets] WHO tells governments to focus on basic health care

Cross posted from: "[health-vn discussion group]" <health-vn@cairo.anu.edu.au>

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L7177447.htm

WHO tells governments to focus on basic health care. excerpts

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA, Oct 14 (Reuters) - The World Health Organisation (WHO) is calling for an overhaul of how health care is financed and managed globally.

The United Nations agency said in its annual World Health Report that the billions of aid dollars devoted to fight specific epidemics like AIDS had distracted attention from providing comprehensive care to mothers and children.

Increasingly specialised and technical medicine in wealthy nations has also excluded and impoverished millions of patients, exposing failures of "laissez-faire" governance in health.

Despite huge foreign aid sums earmarked for programmes fighting AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other killer diseases in developing countries, WHO said quality care remained scarce outside of those specific areas. Disproportionate investment in a limited number of disease programmes considered as global priorities in countries that are dependent on external support has diverted the limited energies of ministries of health away from their primary role.

Front-line health workers ought to better assess patients' overall needs instead of referring them to costly specialists.

Inequitable access and impoverishing costs for health care erode social stability in a number of vulnerable countries. (For more information on international public health issues visit http://www.alertnet.org)

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Vern Weitzel
mailto:vern.weitzel@gmail.com

Dear Colleagues

The recent message about the WHO telling governments to focus on basic health care is interesting ... and a very good example of one hand not knowing what the other hand is doing.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L7177447.htm

Last week I listened to a presentation in Washington about the WHO Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Global Malaria Action Plan (GMAP). This is the same WHO that is now criticizing the disproportionate allocation of resources to single focus disease programs. WHO and its partners have spend a very long time putting together this single disease plan, and it published in the last couple of weeks!

I have studied the GMAP. I followed the progress of its development and tried to make a constructive input to it but failed. What has emerged, I cannot pretend to like.

I consider health to be an important component of successful development ... and malaria to be an important component of health. I think GMAP is a wrong approach and accordingly I have determined to help rework WHO's GMAP so that it reflects best practice for integrated malaria management.

Interestingly ... my view of best practice in health calls for an integrated approach ... in other words a comprehensive inclusive approach. My view calls for better access to health near where people live ... the community. My view addresses cost issues by doing more of what is cost effective and less of what is great but costs an exhorbitant amount.

My commitment is to help get this GMAP rework done well before the next World Malaria Day. I am doing this in cooperation with the Integrated Malaria Management Consortium (IMMC) and would be delighted to hear from anyone else who would like to help in this effort.

Sincerely

Peter Burgess

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Peter Burgess
The Transparency and Accountability Network: Tr-Ac-Net in New York
www.tr-ac-net.org
Community Accountancy
Integrated Malaria Management Consortium (IMMC)
+1 917 432 1191 or +1 212 772 6918 peterbnyc@gmail.com