2001 ABUJA DECLARATION; Health’s allocation less than 15%
DECLARATION:
The minister of Finance pointed out that government believes that the country is currently applying means to fulfil the Abuja Declaration pledge.
MBABANE – After pledging to increase at least 15 per cent of the country’s annual budget in 2001, Eswatini has failed to fulfil her vows, 22 years later.
On April 27, 2001, exactly 22 years ago today, African governments including SADC member States and the members of the African Union (AU) made a historic pledge to allocate at least 15 per cent of their annual budgets to the health sector.
This vow became known as the Abuja Declaration. As COVID-19 spread and wreaked havoc across the world, all eyes were on the Minister of Finance, Neal Rijkenberg, when he delivered the National Budget to the Fifth Session on the 11th Parliament, last Friday.
However, the minister of Finance, speaking to this publication this week, pointed out that government believed that the country was currently applying means to fulfil the Abuja Declaration pledge.
“As you realise now that the health budget has increased to 10.4 per cent equivalent to E2.76 billion from what they got last year which was E2.42 billion, just above the 10 per cent mark. We are aiming towards that direction, you will notice that the health budget does generally increase constantly and the country is trying to get closer and closer to the desired 15 per cent,” pointed out the minister.
Further, the minister cited the spike in COVID-19 cases as one of the reasons that had prevented this vow from being fulfilled.
“You will notice that the spike in COVID-19 cases increased the health budget but as a country that is far behind in the efforts to provide clean water so that people can be healthy and you will realise that in this budget, there is a lot of money that has been allocated so that people can be healthy,” explained the minister.
Last week, Rijkenberg delivered the country’s National Budget which is at E26.4 billion, showing an increase of 14 per cent from last year.
Minister Rijkenberg told parliamentarians that it was for the first time in the position as minister that he had delivered a budget that doesn’t need support, which even economists defined as youth-pro bugdet.
Prioritising
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) report, prioritising health on the continent has no direct relationship to a country’s wealth. It found that several countries with high per capita income such as Algeria, Botswana, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Mauritius, Seychelles and South Africa, do not systematically spend more of their budgets on health. Meanwhile, some lower-income countries such as Ethiopia, Gambia and
Malawi have surpassed the 15 per cent Abuja target.
Across the continent, particularly low priority is given to primary health care. Health spending is instead concentrated on high-end facilities such as referral hospitals which are often located in big cities.
WHO data shows that most African governments spend less than 40 per cent of health service expenditure on primary care. Private and external funds have become the predominant source of financing for these services. In 2017, 20 sub-Saharan countries were among the 26 countries worldwide that relied on donor funding for more than one-fifth of their health spending.
“The COVID-19 pandemic must jolt all African governments to adequately invest