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Too poor to pay: Merlin joins 60 agencies calling for free health care

14 Sep 2009 12:00:13 GMT
Source: Merlin - UK

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Failure to provide free public health care in poor countries means that millions of people are paying with their lives, according to a research report published today by a group of 62 NGOs and health unions.

The report, Your Money or Your Life, says that half a million pregnant women die each year because they do not have access to health care and people are facing abuses such as being imprisoned in clinics, because they cannot pay doctors fees.

Millions of poor people should be offered a lifeline next week, when governments have the chance to expand free health care in developing countries. World leaders will meet at the United Nations General Assembly for a high-level event on health on 23 September where they are expected to extend free health services in at least seven countries: Burundi, Ghana, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal and Sierra Leone.

But leading NGOs and trade unions including ActionAid, Merlin, Oxfam, Save the Children, TUC, Unison and World Vision International are worried that announcements alone are not enough. This initiative must be the start of a solid commitment to financial and technical support and be extended universally to all poor countries.

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Lawrence Oduma, Merlin's Country Director in Liberia, said: "World leaders need to invest in health workers for the long-term. How can poor countries ensure universal access to health care for their people, when they don't know if they will have enough funding to pay and train the health workers needed to deliver it?"

For people living in the seven countries this initiative could make the difference between life and death:

In Liberia one in nine children will not live to see their fifth birthday and less than 20 per cent of the rural population have access to health facilities.
In Nepal a newborn baby dies every 20 minutes and every four hours a woman dies of childbirth related causes.
In Sierra Leone life expectancy is only 34.3 years, it has the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world and only seven per cent of the rural population has access to safe sanitation facilities.
In Burundi 88 per cent of people live on just $2 a day. People have to pay for health care and are reportedly imprisoned by clinics if they donâ€™t have the money.
In Ghana the average life expectancy is just 58 years. Seventy per cent of people in the three northern regions live on less than $1 a day.
In Malawi one woman in every hundred will die in pregnancy and childbirth. The entire population of nearly 14 million is looked after by just 266 registered doctors.
In Mozambique 1.3 million people are living with HIV/AIDS and 60 per cent of HIV-positive adults are women.

Progress on health is desperately off track and the 2015 Millennium Development Goals deadline is fast approaching. Every year four million newborn babies die within 28 days of birth and the number of women dying in pregnancy and childbirth has barely changed since 1990, despite the MDG commitment to reduce the number of deaths by three quarters.

Governments need new funding to scale up and expand services, recruit and retain more doctors and health workers and provide more facilities and medicines that are easy to reach and accessible to everyone.

Read the joint report - Your Money or Your Life

Find out more about our work around the world

[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

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[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

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