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WHO
Calls for Boost in Basic Health Care
Global efforts to battle HIV/AIDS and
slash infant mortality rates will flounder unless the international
community boosts basic medical care in poor countries, the U.N.
health agency said.
Campaigns against individual diseases
are essential, but policy-makers also must focus on overall health
services because neglecting them increases the risk that epidemics
will spread across national borders, the World Health Organization
said in its annual report.
Around 30 million people in African
nations are infected with HIV/AIDS, about 70 percent of all cases
in the world. AIDS kills 5,000 adults and 1,000 children every
day in Africa. Adult life expectancy there has plunged as much
as 20 years because of the disease.
But even without the impact of
AIDS, millions of children born in Africa and other poor regions
are at greater risk of dying before their fifth birthday than
they were a decade ago, said the World Health Report.
International health programs —
like WHO-spearheaded attempts to increase access to anti-HIV drugs
— face "obstacles that have slowed and in some cases reversed
progress toward meeting the health needs of all people," said
the 193-page study.
Already struggling health services
have been overwhelmed in the fight against AIDS, hampering efforts
to defeat older killers like malaria and widening the health divide
between rich and poor nations.
"These global health gaps are unacceptable,"
WHO chief Dr. Lee Jong-wook told reporters as he launched the
report. "At the present rate of progress, it will take not 15
years but 150 years to reach the target of reducing child mortality
in Africa by two-thirds."
Lee contrasted the prospects of
baby girls born in 2002 in Japan and Sierra Leone.
While the Japanese baby can expect
to live for about 85 years, life expectancy for the child in one
of Africa's poorest countries is now just 36 years. In the United
States, women can expect to live to 80 years, and men, 75.
The Japanese girl will likely receive
some of the world's best health care whenever she needs it, but
the girl in Sierra Leone may never see a doctor, nurse or health
worker, said Lee.
Some 10.5 million children in poor
nations die every year before they turn five, 70 percent from
infectious diseases. Leading child killers in 2002 included respiratory
infections, which caused 1.9 million deaths. Diarrhea killed 1.6
million and malaria 1.1 million.
Around 9.5 million of the deaths
easily could be prevented, said WHO expert Dr. Robert Beaglehole.
"We can make a difference, right now," with things like oral rehydration
treatment for diarrhea and anti-mosquito bed nets to fight malaria,
he said.
"But very poor countries which
only have the ability to spend $10 per person a year can't
do this alone," Beaglehole said. "It's very hard to deal with
health emergencies with the existing work force."
The report said donors can counter
some of the weaknesses by funding more training for health workers,
while governments should boost partnerships between health officials
and affected communities. "It's going to take 10-15 years to build
up, so we must start now," Beaglehole told reporters.
Poor children who do make it past
childhood are confronted with adult death rates that exceed those
of 30 years ago, said the report.
The gap between industrialized
and developing countries is stark in the statistics on maternal
mortality, said WHO. The risk for women of dying in childbirth
is 250 times higher in poor countries than in rich ones. More
than 500,000 women die each year as a result of complications
during pregnancy.
The leading killers in 2002 were:
HIV/AIDS, with 2.3 million deaths; heart disease, 1.3 million;
tuberculosis, 1 million; stroke, 800,000. Road accidents killed
800,000 people, mostly in developing countries.
World Health Organization, http://www.who.int
Reference
Source 102
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