Check Against Delivery

Transcription

1 Check Against Delivery OPENING ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED REPUBLIC OF TANZANIA, HIS EXCELLENCY BENJAMIN WILLIAM MKAPA, AT THE HIGH LEVEL SESSION OF THE NINTH BOARD MEETING OF THE GLOBAL FUND TO FIGHT AIDS, TUBERCULOSIS AND MALARIA, ARUSHA, 17 NOVEMBER 2004 Your Excellencies Heads of State and Government; Secretary Tommy Thompson, Chair of the Global Fund Board; Honourable Ministers; Global Fund Board Members; Distinguished Guests; Ladies and Gentlemen: On behalf of the government and people of the United Republic of Tanzania, I welcome all Board Members of the Global Fund to our country. I thank you for accepting my invitation to hold the Ninth Board Meeting in Tanzania, the first time the Board is meeting in Africa. This, among other things, reflects the very good relations between the Global Fund and Tanzania. We are fully committed to upholding and further strengthening these relations. I welcome you my fellow Heads of State and Government. I am grateful that you accepted my invitation to this High Level Session of the Board, so that together we can welcome the Global Fund Board to Africa, and collectively renew our partnership and team spirit with it. The reason we wanted you, the Board, to meet in sub-saharan Africa is obvious. We, in Africa, carry the heaviest burden of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; yet we are the ones least prepared, and least able, to cope in terms of financial resources, in terms of human resources, in terms of health delivery infrastructure and in terms of technological capacity to research or manufacture vaccines and drugs to meet these monumental health emergencies of our time. I am pleased that the Deputy Chair of the Commission for Africa, Honourable Hilary Benn, could come to this meeting. I have no doubt that between him and I, and

2 our other colleagues in the Commission, the case for supporting Africa robustly in the war on HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria will feature prominently in our report, and engender appropriate decisions and actions in the councils of the G8 and the European Union next year. Funding Appeal Excellencies, The Southern African Development (SADC) has just concluded its annual malaria campaign week. And this year s campaign slogan could not have been better chosen: Less Talk, and More Action The Road to a Malaria Free Southern Africa. For us in Africa, this impatience on the action front goes beyond SADC, and beyond malaria. So, I welcome the Global Fund to Africa with this same slogan: Less Talk, and More Action. And this is an appeal I issue to all African governments, that we should all live up to the commitments we have made in successive summits. This is also an appeal I issue to our cooperating partners, to civil society, and to the corporate sector. For, I am convinced that working together we can roll back malaria, we can roll back HIV and AIDS, and we can roll back tuberculosis. But we must now shift resolutely from talk to action. I have great hopes for tomorrow s board meeting. For, I am convinced that your meeting on African soil is much more than symbolic; it illustrates practical commitment to supporting African efforts to manage and resolve these health emergencies. I am, nevertheless, deeply concerned about the existing funding gap in implementing the 3 by 5 initiative to scale up HIV/AIDS care and treatment. From my hospital bed, on the last World AIDS Day, 1 st December 2003, I wrote letters to the leaders of a good number of rich countries appealing for new financial resources for the Global Fund. This was in addition to an earlier appeal I had made the year before. And today I join all other activists, and recently President Mandela, Bono and Jack Valenti, in further appealing for new, predictable, and sustainable funding for this urgent life-saving task. I thank those countries like The Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom which have recently made commitments for additional and advance payments in 2004 to

3 the Global Fund. I thank the pharmaceutical companies that have reduced the cost of ARV drugs to poor countries. I thank private foundations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that, among other things, help to finance research into new drugs and vaccines. I appreciate President George Bush s engagement with the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa, and commend his Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Not least I thank President Clinton for his fund-raising efforts for HIV/AIDS programmes, for negotiating lower prices for ARV drugs and for helping us in Tanzania to prepare an excellent care and treatment plan. I am told that here, in Arusha, the Board is expected to decide on whether to launch the fifth funding round or not. I earnestly appeal to all donor governments, international organisations and private donors to make a genuine effort, and show practical support to Africa, by raising the resources necessary to fund existing grants and launch new funding rounds. Frankly, meeting for the first time in Africa, and not deciding to launch a new funding round, will be difficult for Africans to understand. It will send a wrong signal to those struggling with meagre resources to address these alarming and pressing health emergencies. And on the same note, let me argue strongly for increasing the budget of the World Health Organization, which is our great supporter, especially at the technical level. Health and Socio-Economic Development Excellencies There is a direct link between the health of people and the health of a nation s economy. The Commission on Macroeconomics and Health issued a report that provided a compelling case that increased spending on health makes economic sense, and that scaling up investments in health among the world s poor will not only save millions of lives, but also produce enormous economic gains. Investment in health is investment in socio-economic development. Many of the Millenium Development Goals will not be met unless more investments are made in health. You cannot seriously talk of reducing infant and under-5 child mortality without addressing malaria which accounts for 20 per cent of all under-5 deaths. How can we meet the educational and health goals when thousands of teachers and medical workers are too ill, or are dying, from AIDS?

4 But we know that it is possible to save those children dying of malaria. We know that it is possible to restore the health of People Living with HIV AIDS through free and comprehensive care and treatment programmes. We know that it is possible to ensure that the professionals we have trained at great cost can live long enough to contribute their knowledge and experience to socio-economic development. We know it is possible for them to live long enough to raise and provide for their children, and reduce the incidence and burden of orphans. Solemnly, I urge that we garner the necessary political will to make all this possible. The debate now has to be put to rest whether Africa should scale up care and treatment programmes or not. Let me be clear: We must work to prevent those who are not infected from being infected, by all means possible; but we must also ensure that HIV positive people live in dignity and work as long as possible. I know the health delivery infrastructure may leave much to be desired. We should work together to build it up. I know we need to train more counsellors, more technicians, more nurses and more doctors. Together we should urgently invest in their training. I know we have to ensure quality testing facilities and quality drugs; uninterrupted resources and uninterrupted treatment. The cost for such resources and facilities must also be taken into account. That is why Africa is asking for urgent and long-term commitment to address these weaknesses. For, we cannot wait and watch our people die when it is possible to give them a new lease of life. And let us not forget: Life is the most basic human right. Like HIV/AIDS, malaria is both a disease of poverty and a cause of poverty. And like any disease, the best way to deal with it is prevention. This morning, I launched the manufacture of long-life insecticide treated mosquito nets at A to Z factory, the first such production in Africa. It is my hope that, coupled with the measures we took to remove taxes, and to provide subsidies in the form of vouchers for such nests, much progress will be made in the war against malaria. Ownership, Leadership and Harmonization Excellencies

5 Africa needs external support, but it must own the programmes, and show leadership, in the fight against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. We ask that our partners in this fight grant us the policy space to practically own and direct it. This year, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) devoted an entire issue on what rich countries can learn from poor ones in terms of successful health initiatives that make the best use of scarce resources and local knowledge. They concluded that often it is not only what you spend on health that counts but how you spend it. Dr. Donald M. Berwick, who wrote a lead article tin that BMJ issue, said, We will meet in the developing world a level of will, skill and constancy that may put ours to shame. We may find ourselves not the teachers we thought we were, but students of those who work under circumstances that would have stopped us long ago. The journal goes on to provide a long list of successful initiatives in developing countries and emerging market economies, from the successful Carabayllo tuberculosis project in Peru; to quality improvement in Russia; to community based programmes through local women s groups in Nepal and rural India; to successes in the war on HIV/AIDS in Uganda; to control of measles in Brazil; and, not least, to Tanzania s success with its Essential Drugs Project. I am especially satisfied that you, Global Fund Board Members, had the opportunity to make site visits to see for yourselves what we are doing in Tanzania, with strong political leadership, with our own resources, and with the supplementary resources and technical assistance we receive from our partners. So let me once again emphasize the importance of local ownership, local leadership and harmonization; and the importance of our development partners being open to new ideas and to learning from experience of in our countries. Conclusion Excellencies, I should like to conclude with the same conclusion reached by the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health. They said:

6 Fighting disease will be the truest test of our common capacity to foreg a true global community. There is no excuse in today s world for millions of people to suffer and die each year for lack of $34 per person needed to cover essential health services. A just and far-sighted world will not let this tragedy continue. That was three years ago. We thank all governments, multilateral institutions, private people, charitable foundations and civil society that have thrown their energies towards the fight against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It is my hope that the present Board Meeting of the Global Fund will give Africa reason for more hope, not despair; and reason to believe that ours is still a just and far-sighted world that will not shut its eyes and ears to the unfolding health tragedy in Africa. I thank you for your kind attention.