World leaders meet at the UN General Assembly today for a high-level event on health. They have a golden opportunity to make free healthcare a reality for millions of people. Elvis Sukali reports.
£200. That’s how much it costs to keep someone alive for a year in Malawi. Doesn’t sound like much - about the price of a new TV in the UK - but in Malawi the average wage is only about £8 a month.
Nearly a million people in my country are living with the HIV virus and some are lucky enough to get life-saving treatment for free. Thanks to a combination of overseas aid and government action over the last five years the number of people who have been able to access free anti-retroviral drugs has gone from virtually zero to over 130,000. Treatment has revolutionised not only people’s attitudes, but they now see that it can offer them a way to live. People are coming out to get tested because they know these drugs can offer a real hope for survival.
Grace Ligomba is one of those who benefited from free drugs and would have otherwise died. She tested positive for HIV in March 2007, “I became so sick and that compelled me to go for an HIV test. I had continuous fever, was vomiting, lost my appetite for food and I didn’t have the strength to do any work. I didn’t harvest anything last year because I didn’t have any strength to work in my field. I was very sick. But I hope I can harvest enough this year because I am now strong.”
Most of Grace’s children have left home, but she still cares for her youngest son, 12-year-old Willie. Because of the free anti retroviral drugs, Grace says she feels much healthier and can go back to work in her fields to harvest enough food for them both. She currently relies on selling vegetables and tomatoes to make a living and buy basic necessities such as food, paraffin and clothes for Willie, who is in standard two at the local primary school.
Despite these amazing improvements in access to free healthcare in Malawi, distribution of drugs is on a first come, first serve basis. There are long waiting lists and too many Malawians have seen people they love die because drugs were not available.
Grace’s husband was one of the unlucky ones, “My husband didn’t test for HIV because at that time testing facilities were far apart and anti-retroviral drugs were not available in the community like they are now. My husband would not have died if he had access to these drugs. I am saying this from the experience that I have with taking them. I would also have died if this opportunity to access free medicine was not there.”
Malawi still has a long way to go and one of the main obstacles to everyone having free access to good quality healthcare is the health worker crisis. Only three per cent of the population lives in a village with a health centre. In the whole country, with 14 million residents, there are only 266 doctors. This situation can been seen right across Africa, where poorly equipped health systems struggle to cope not just with the HIV virus, but malaria and other diseases. In Sierra Leone, for example, life expectancy is just 34.3 years and they have the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world.
What Malawi and other African countries need is the money to recruit and retain more doctors and health workers and to provide more facilities that are easy to reach and accessible to everyone.
Today, at least seven developing countries should be offered a lifeline, when world leaders will meet at the United Nations General Assembly for a high-level event on health. This could be a real turning point, when leaders in developing countries and leaders in rich donor countries have the opportunity to stand side-by-side and make free healthcare a reality for millions of people.
The world leaders should not pass this opportunity to make a difference by improving health care more especially in the poor countries of the sub saharan africa.
History will judge them by such kind of intiatives!
September 24th, 2009 at 10:24 amNice article Elvis. Lets hope this free health care for all will really be made a reality.
September 24th, 2009 at 10:56 am