Funding crisis hits health sector

Uganda is unlikely to meet health sector development targets made two years ago at the United Nations millennium summit, a new report by an economic research organisation has revealed. "Little will be achieved at the current rate of expenditure in the health sector," John Okidi, director of the Uganda-based Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC), told IRIN on Monday. In its 30-page report, funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), EPRC stated that Uganda's current expenditure in the health sector was US $6 per person per annum. This was to be increased to US $11, which was still less that the recommended US $12 minimum, the Monitor independent newspaper reported on Sunday. The report is Uganda's contribution to individual country reports to be presented at the international conference on financing for development to be held in Mexico next month, according to Okidi. By way of contrast, the EPRC study - which projected the investment in key social sectors over the next five years against the millenium targets - indicated that Uganda had made great strides in education. Launched in 1997, Uganda's current strategy of free education for all - known as Universal Primary Education (UPE) - is rated as one of Africa's great successes, increasing the number of children attending primary schools from 2.5 million in 1997 to 6.5 million in 2001, according to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). Under UPE, the Ugandan government introduced a policy of providing four children in every family, including orphaned and disabled children, with free primary education. Uganda hopes that the implementation of UPE will have an enormous impact on the future of education in the country, the report said. In the health sector, however, indicators such as infant and maternal mortality rates indicate a declining trend, due to the country's lack of crucial resources and its overdependence on foreign aid. "Contrary to the success story for primary education, the health sector has experienced worsening conditions. For example, between 1995 and 2000, the infant mortality rate, the under-five mortality rate, and immunisation coverage have all deteriorated," the Monitor quoted the report as saying. HIV/AIDS statistics, however, were likely to distort the true picture of the development gains made so far, according to Okidi. "We are allowing all contributors to infant mortality in the data. The challenge is to isolate the infant mortality data [by excluding the HIV/AIDS factor]," he said. Uganda has emerged as the success story in Sub-Saharan Africa in its effort to reduce HIV-prevalence levels, according to the joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), which noted a decline in the numbers of HIV-positive women attending antenatal clinics through the 1980s and 1990s, at clinics for sexually transmitted diseases for both men and women, and among young people. Nonetheless, of a population of about 21 million, 820,000 people (including over 470,000 women and children) were estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 1999, according to UNAIDS latest statistics. The adult rate of infection then stood at 8.3 percent, it said. [For UNAIDS country information on Uganda visit: www.unaids.org] "Uganda faces several challenges on the path towards its millennium development goals, ranging from ensuring a long-term favourable perspective for foreign direct investment to increased private-sector productivity and domestic resource mobilisation," the report was quoted as saying.