The Secretary General of the African Research University Alliance (ARUA), Professor Ernest Aryeetey, has advocated an increase in budget allocation to the health sector of sub-Saharan Africa to enhance healthcare.
He said that though other sectors of the economy are equally important and compete with the little funds available, health should be priorities during budgeting and allocated a significant amount to enhance infrastructure and increase access towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 3.
Addressing the 7th University of Health and Allied Sciences John Evans Atta Mills (JEAM) Leadership Lecture Series, he lamented that Sub-Saharan African countries have not met the health SDG price tag within the last year, with Ghana lying 15th on the 2019 African Countries health expenditure per capita table.
He added that, according to records of the World Health Organization, Sub-Saharan Africa has not made any significant progress towards attaining the targets of SDG 3- Good Health and Well-being.
Prof Aryeetey listed poverty and inequality, high disease burden, poor health governance, poor healthcare system, inadequate health workers and medical supplies, and poor health facilities among others, as some of the identified challenges in attaining the development goal.
He, therefore, called on African leaders to focus on research and knowledge development to achieve SDG 3 and urged researchers to leverage the evolving African scientific narrative, conduct detailed and relevant research to help in the attainment of the development goal.
“The relevant policy measures to achieve the SDGs can only be put into practice through research and knowledge development”, he said
Professor Ernest Aryeetey explained that this is one of the surest measures the Western world had adopted and inching towards achieving the goals.
“One important way that the health SDGs can be achieved in Africa is through reliance on science and knowledge generation. Most regions of the world have prioritised research and knowledge creation (except for Africa) and this can explain their positive outturns.
“The relevant policy measures to achieve the SDGs can only be put into practice through research and knowledge development.
“Fourth, an enabling environment should be created to foster innovation and continuous Iearning in health financing.
“The development of an appropriate Community of Practice that relies on collaboration and co-development, adopting technology-friendly Options for health delivery (e.g telemedicine) and encouraging public-private partnerships can also be helpful.
“Finally, I will speak to the issue of encouraging the donor community to be more flexible with their graduation or exit criteria from donor-funded health programmes, especially for most African countries.
“Most of these countries are gradually becoming middle-income countries, yet are not capable to generate the needed finance to address the health gap” he said.
SDG 3 focuses on attaining various health outcomes, including ending the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other communicable diseases by 2030.
It also aims to achieve universal health coverage, reduce maternal mortality, and provide access to safe and effective medicines and vaccines for all.
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