Day: August 8, 2022

A new philanthropic project hopes to invest $100 million in 10 countries, mostly in Africa, by 2030 to support 200,000 community health workers, who serve as a critical bridge to treatment for people with limited access to medical care.

The Skoll Foundation and The Johnson & Johnson Foundation announced Monday that they donated a total of $25 million to the initiative. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, which will oversee the project, matched the donations and hopes to raise an additional $50 million.

The investment seeks to empower the front-line workers that experts say are essential to battling outbreaks of COVID-19, Ebola and HIV.

“What have we found out in terms of community health workers?” said Francisca Mutapi, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, who helps lead a multiyear project to treat neglected tropical diseases in multiple African countries. “They are very popular. They are very effective. They are very cost effective.”

On a recent trip to Zimbabwe for research, Mutapi described how a community health worker negotiated the treatment of a parasitic infection in a young child who was part of a religious group that doesn’t accept clinical medicine.

“She’s going to the river, getting on with her day-to-day business, and she notices that one of the children in her community is complaining about a stomachache,” said Mutapi.

The woman approached the child’s grandmother for permission to bring the child to a clinic, which diagnosed and began treating the child for bilharzia. That would not have happened without the woman’s intervention, Mutapi said.

Ashley Fox, an associate professor specializing in global health policy at Albany, SUNY, said evidence shows community health workers can effectively deliver low-cost care “when they are properly equipped and trained and paid – that’s a big caveat.”

Though the current number of these workers is not well documented, in 2017, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that the continent required 2 million to meet health targets. Many of these workers are women and unpaid, though The Global Fund advocates for some sort of salary for them.

“It’s hard to think of a better set of people that you would want to be paying if you think about it from both the point of view of creating good jobs as well as maximizing the health impact,” said Peter Sands, the fund’s executive director.

The Global Fund, founded in 2002, channels international financing with the aim of eradicating treatable infectious diseases. In addition to its regular three-year grants to countries, it will deploy these new philanthropic donations through a catalytic fund to encourage spending on some of the best practices and program designs.

Last Mile Health, part of the Africa Frontline First health initiative, has worked with the Liberian government to expand and strengthen its community health program since 2016.

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, former Liberian president and Noble Peace Prize recipient, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, convened Last Mile Health and other organizations to grapple with a response.

“We were all kind of seeing the Deja vu moment of recalling back to a couple of years ago where Liberia was beset by this tragic epidemic of Ebola,” said Nan Chen, managing director of Last Mile Health. “And as President Sirleaf reminded us: the tide was turned when we turned to the community.”

Along with the other organizations that specialize in the financing, research and policy of public health, they set about designing an initiative to expand community health programs and to capitalize on the attention the pandemic brought to the need for disease surveillance.

The catalytic fund is the result. “I think the pandemic has shone a light on the critical role of these health workers,” said Lauren Moore, vice president of global community impact at Johnson & Johnson.

Don Gips, CEO of the Skoll Foundation, emphasized that these workers also can raise early warnings that benefit people everywhere.

“It’s critical not just for delivering health care in Africa, but this is how we’ll also catch the next set of diseases that could threaten populations around the world,” said Gips, who is also the former U.S. ambassador to South Africa.

Last Mile Health won a major donation from the Skoll Foundation in 2017 and has also received large donations from the Audacious Project from TED and Co-Impact, another funding collective. The organization’s co-founder, Raj Panjabi, now serves in the Biden administration.

“What philanthropy has noticed about Last Mile Health is that we were not only taking direct action on the problem by actively managing community health worker programs, but that we were seeing our innovation adopted in national policy at scale,” said James Nardella, the organization’s chief program officer.

SUNY’s Fox and other experts say linking the work of community health care workers to the national health system is a priority, along with securing sustainable funding for their programs.

The Global Fund said it will assist countries with the design of proposed community health care worker expansions over the next year.

Chen acknowledged there is no silver bullet for the issue of sustainability.

“Part of the work that organizations like Last Mile Health have to do is to sit in that discomfort and wrestle with it, with our partners, with donors, until we incrementally squeeze out the solution here,” Chen said.

Mutapi said eventually governments must fund the programs themselves and she argued the experiences of places like Zimbabwe and Liberia with community health workers could benefit people in other contexts as well.

“Actually, having lived on Scottish islands, which are inaccessible,” she said, the innovation of community health workers is “something that actually can be exported to Western communities that are remote because that connection between a health provider and the local community is really important for compliance and for access.”

Source: Voice of America

PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA —

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a speech on the key U.S. strategy for sub-Saharan Africa at the University of Pretoria on Monday, on the first leg of his Africa trip.

Blinken stressed the value of democracy and the threats to it in his address, saying Africa was an “equal partner” that the U.S. wanted to work with and would not “dictate to.”

“By 2050, 1 in 4 people on the planet we share will be African. They will shape the destiny, not only of this continent, but of the world,” he said.

Blinken spoke about the blow the pandemic has dealt to Africa and economies on the continent, as well as food insecurity he said had been deepened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

He also addressed a wide range of issues, including conflict prevention, misinformation online, science and technology, as well as climate change and clean energy.

VOA spoke to several South African students, asking their thoughts on the address by America’s top diplomat.

Zaphesheya Dlamini, who has just finished a master’s degree in political science, was skeptical.

“Listen — every single foreign policy, every single national interest, is always going to be their national interest. It’s not ours, we know that. But then don’t try and present it like it’s a shared interest,” Dlamini said.

She also thought Blinken didn’t address how U.S. domestic politics influence the rest of the world. She referenced the overturning of the U.S. landmark case Roe v. Wade, which protected a woman’s right to an abortion, and the Global Gag Rule, which prohibits foreign nongovernmental organizations that receive U.S. funding from providing legal abortion services or referrals, as examples of things she thought he should have spoken about.

International relations student Billy Botshabelo Manama, 22, said Blinken’s speech heavily promoted good governance, which he acknowledged had sometimes been a problem on the continent.

“Look — a lot has been mentioned on democracy, rightfully so, looking at the history of Africa,” Manama said.

Manama added that he believed that like the U.S., South Africa also stood for equality and human rights.

Source: Voice of America

The chairman of the African Union commission condemned Israeli “air strike attacks” in the Gaza Strip as violence escalates in the troubled region, with 41 Palestinians reported dead.

“Moussa Faki Mahamat strongly condemns the continued air strike attacks by Israel on Gaza that have killed more than 41 Palestinian civilians, including 15 children and four women, and 311 have been injured,” an AU statement said.

The “targeting of civilians and the continued illegal occupation by Israeli security forces of the Occupied Territories, are in stark violation of international law, and complicate the search for a just and lasting solution”, the statement said.

The recent fighting is the worst in Gaza since a war last year devastated the impoverished coastal territory, home to some 2.3 million Palestinians, and forced Israelis to seek shelter from rockets.

Israel has stepped up its bombardments of positions of Islamic Jihad, an Iran-backed group designated as a terrorist organisation by several Western nations, and the militants have fired over 500 rockets in return.

The relationship with Israel is a rare point of contention for the AU, a body that values consensus, with powerful member states, notably South Africa, loudly protesting a decision by Faki last year to accept Israel’s

accreditation to the bloc as an observer.

The decision was a major diplomatic win for Israel, but opposing member nations said it contradicted numerous AU statements — including from Faki himself — backing the Palestinian Territories.

In its statement on Sunday, the AU reiterated its support for “the Palestinian people in their legitimate quest for an independent and sovereign State” with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in South Africa on Sunday to kick off a three-nation visit aimed at countering Russian influence on the continent.

The visit came after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov undertook an extensive tour of Africa late last month.

South Africa, a leader in the developing world, has remained neutral in the Ukraine war, refusing to join Western calls to condemn Moscow, which had opposed apartheid before the end of white minority rule in 1994.

Blinken will hold talks on Monday with South African counterpart Naledi Pandor and also make an announcement on the US government’s new Africa strategy, Pretoria said in a statement.

They will “discuss ongoing and recent developments relating to the global geopolitical situation,” it said.

The State Department last month called African countries “geostrategic players and critical partners on the most pressing issues of our day, from promoting an open and stable international system, to tackling the effects of climate change, food insecurity and global pandemics to shaping our technological and economic futures”.

Blinken who is on his second trip to Africa since his appointment early last year, is due to proceed to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda later this week.

His visit to DR Congo is aimed at boosting support for sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest country which battling to turn the page on decades of conflict.

He winds up the tour in Rwanda, which has seen a flare-up in tensions with DR Congo after it accused its neighbour to the east of backing M23 rebels, a charge Kigali denies.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Sudan on Sunday arrested key rebel officers and handed them to South Sudanese. Their group confirmed the arrest saying it was coordinated between the security services in the two countries.

Three senior military officers, identified as Major Nyuon Garang Kuol, Major General Pur Aruop Kuol, and Brigadier General Gatluak Majiok Liey were arrested on Sunday by members of Sudan’s Rapid Support Force (RSF) in the Al-Fula town of West Kordofan in Sudan.

Family members and multiple sources with direct knowledge told Sudan Tribune on Sunday the officers were visiting family members living in Sudan and did not possess any military equipment or weapons.

A rebel group, calling itself South Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SSPM/A) issued a statement confirming the incident had taken place and said the officers arrested belong to the group.

The SSPM condemned Sudan’s decision, saying arresting and handing them over to South Sudan was a violation of humanitarian and international law.

“South Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army condemns the arrest of its senior SSPM/A senior officers, who were arrested on 06/08/2022 in Fula, Sudan by Sudan Rapid Support Force in coordination with south Sudan national security adviser Tut Kew Gatluak who has bribed colonel Taj Yusif of Sudan Rapid Support Force to kidnap our officers who went to visit their families in Fula and to hand them over to Juba National Security adviser Tut Gatluak in possible revenge for the death of his brother, the commissioner of Mayom who was killed in the counter-attack on Mayom on 21/07/2022. This is against the international and humanitarian laws,” said the statement extended to Sudan Tribune.

The circumstances under which the arrests were made are still unclear and neither Juba nor Khartoum has issued statements regarding the incident.

A video footage Sudan Tribune obtained on Sunday showed three people with hands tied on their backs seated in the middle of a military vehicle belonging to RSF.

South Sudan and Sudan signed a cooperation agreement in 2012, committing the two countries not to host, train, arm, and use allow armed and non-armed political dissident groups with an objective to change the government in either country by violent means. The agreement, signed after South Sudan’s cessation from Sudan in 2011, provides for various principles to guide relations between the two nations, in which both countries commit themselves to non-aggression and cooperation.

The agreement demands the two sides agreed to “respect each other’s sovereignty, the exclusive right over their natural resources and territorial integrity” and to “refrain from facilitating or launching any attack, including aerial bombardment. It established a monitoring mechanism that allows either side to lodge complaints if a border dispute erupts. Nonetheless, officials from both sides have traded accusations in which they attempted to depict one as the victim and the other as the aggressor.

Source: Sudan Tribune

Healthy life expectancy among Africans living in mainly high and upper middle-income countries on the continent, has increased by almost 10 years, the UN health agency, WHO, said.

The World Health Organization announced the good news after examining life expectancy data among the 47 countries that make up the WHO African Region from 2000 to 2019, as part of a continent-wide report into progress on healthcare access for all a key SDG target.

“This rise is greater than in any other region of the world during the same period,” the WHO said, before warning that the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic could threaten “these huge gains”.

According to the UN agency’s report, Tracking Universal Health Coverage in the WHO African Region 2022, life-expectancy on the continent has increased to 56 years, compared with 46 at the turn of the century.

“While still well below the global average of 64, over the same period, global healthy life expectancy increased by only five years,” it explained.

The continent’s health ministries should be credited for their “drive” to improve health and wellbeing among populations, said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa.

In particular, the continent has benefited from better access to essential health services up from 24 per cent in 2000 to 46 per cent in 2019 along with gains in reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health.

Considerable progress against infectious diseases has also contributed to longer life expectancy, WHO said, pointing to the rapid scale-up of HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria control measures from 2005.

Despite these welcome initiatives in preventing and treating infectious diseases, the UN agency cautioned that these gains had been offset by a “dramatic” rise in hypertension, diabetes and other noncommunicable diseases, in addition to the lack of health services targeting these diseases.

“People are living healthier, longer lives, with fewer threats of infectious diseases and with better access to care and disease prevention services,” said Dr. Moeti.

“But the progress must not stall. Unless countries enhance measures against the threat of cancer and other noncommunicable diseases, the health gains could be jeopardized.”

Ringfencing these precious health gains against the negative impact of COVID-19 “and the next pathogen to come” will be crucial, the WHO official insisted, as the UN agency noted that on average, African countries saw greater disruption across essential services, compared with other regions.

In total, more than 90 per cent of the 36 countries that responded to the 2021 WHO survey reported one or more disruptions to essential health services, with immunization, neglected tropical diseases and nutrition services most badly affected.

“It is crucial for governments to step up public health financing,” WHO insisted, adding that most governments in Africa fund less than 50 per cent of their national health budgets, resulting in large funding gaps. “Only Algeria, Botswana, Cabo Verde, Eswatini, Gabon, Seychelles and South Africa” fund more than half of their health expenditure, it noted.

One of WHO’s top recommendations to all governments looking to boost healthcare access is for them to reduce “catastrophic” household expenditure on medicines and consultations.

Households that spend more than 10 per cent of their income on health fall into the “catastrophic” category. Over the past 20 years, out-of-pocket expenditure has stagnated or increased in 15 African countries.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK