Funds urgently needed for health care warns WHO

The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Monday that thousands of people could die in Southern Africa from the explosive combination of disease, hunger and a lack of medical facilities unless money was raised quickly for urgent health care. By supporting governments to provide health interventions at around US $3.40 per person, WHO believes hundreds of thousands of disease-related deaths could be averted in the current regional food crisis. "So far, known funding amounts to US 35 cents per person," a WHO statement said. It said the emergency in Southern Africa was not just a food shortage but a comprehensive humanitarian crisis. In the worst-affected countries - Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho and Swaziland - as many as 300,000 malnourished people could die of diseases they would otherwise fight off with a minimum of food and basic health care. "The cruel irony is that we know how to save thousands of people, and are ready to do it, yet the world seems unwilling to pay the small cost of making it happen," WHO Director-General Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland said. "Money is needed to provide medicines, keep health workers in place, ensure therapeutic feeding, keep supply lines open, track the extent of suffering and plan the most effective response," she added. A US $611 million UN consolidated humanitarian appeal for the region launched in July included US $48 million for health. But humanitarian officials have warned that donor pledges for non-food aid had so far been disappointing. "We are seriously short on what we call the non-food money for education projects, the health projects, water and sanitation projects, and we desperately need to publicise that aspect," Carolyn McAskie, the Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told IRIN last month. Poverty is the main cause of vulnerability and was taking its toll before the current regional crisis, the WHO statement said. "Urgent and priority health needs, including clean water and sanitation, therapeutic feeding, accessible and effective health care, must be addressed - and quickly. Southern Africa cannot wait," WHO warned. In Zimbabwe the death rates from tuberculosis (TB) and acute respiratory infection has increased drastically in the last three years. Zimbabwe and South Africa were among countries the WHO said urgently needed additional funding for TB eradication programmes. TB and HIV/AIDS are often regarded as interdependent. The latest World Food Programme (WFP) emergency report said that in Malawi the number of new TB cases in 10 districts surveyed had more than doubled in the first six months of this year. The latest US Agency for International Development situation report said a cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe had so far killed 24 people out of 462 reported cases. The outbreak was linked to poor water and sanitation facilities. WHO had provided US $210,000 for the purchase of drugs to control the outbreak. WHO said that governments struggled to provide public health services on budgets as low as US $20 a year per person, and health facilities often had neither the staff nor the medicine to care for the sick. Extremely high rates of HIV/AIDS infection had already reduced the numbers of productive adults and professionals, including health workers in Southern Africa.