PSI Africa calls for gov'ts to walk the talk on health funding commitments under Abuja Declaration

At the founding conference of the African Health Sector Unions’ Council (AHSUC), held in Lome in August 2022, it was resolved that implementing the Abuja Declaration in African countries would be a priority. Today that priority was made real when PSI and AHSUC launched a 2-year campaign for this purpose in Lusaka, Zambia, during the Regional Executive Committee meeting for Africa and Arab countries (AFREC).

In 2001, heads of state and governments from across Africa passed the Abuja Declaration, in which they unanimously resolved to each commit at least 15% of their annual budgetary allocations to funding healthcare. However, in nearly 25 years since then, less than 10% of the Member States of the African Union have managed to do so.

PSI General Secretary Daniel Bertossa told Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) morning radio that “countries could meet their health spending commitments if multinational corporations paid their fair share in tax and stopped shifting profits out of Africa and into tax havens”.

“There is 30 trillion USD in tax havens and privatised healthcare is not needed if governments collected taxes from those able to pay. Privatised health care is inefficient and inequitable and can only be justified when governments fail to meet their own funding commitments,” added Bertossa.   

The state of healthcare in Africa is abysmal and has grown worse after the COVID-19 pandemic. The continent bears the greatest disease burden in the world and the highest incidence of catastrophic health spending. The health and care workforce is grossly insufficient. This reflects the severe shortage of health workers and the poor state of health systems in the region. And it is already clear that the goal of attaining universal health care by 2030 is a mirage for Africans.

Bertossa also told ZNBC that “PSI research showed that more than one in three of the global health workforce surveyed by PSI had witnessed unnecessary death from underfunding and almost a half were considering quitting. The 15 million global healthcare worker shortage can only be fixed if governments meet their funding commitments”.

A major reason for this worrisome situation is that governments have failed to adequately fund the provision of healthcare as a fundamental human right. There are several reasons for this, but none is excusable. These include the constriction of fiscal policy space due to international financial institutions’ conditionalities, dodgy tax practices by multinational corporations and illicit financial flows. But this does not have to be the case if African leaders walk their talk.

Here is the petition sent by AHSUC and PSI to the chairman of the African Union.