Bibliography

This paper was presented at the African Union's (AU) Continental Conference on Maternal, Infant and Child Health in Africa from 19 to 21 April 2010. It seeks to outline, in broad terms, the basis for a required massive paradigm shift in ‘health financing’ in Africa. It argues that the key basis for the shift is that all available evidence over the past nine to ten years indicates that, after an initial burst of progress, isolated health financing on its own has achieved mixed or limited success, and Africa’s overall health burden and mortality is now greater in 2010 than it was in 2000. In April 2001, African Heads of State met in Abuja, Nigeria to make the continent's main financial commitment towards meeting the health Millennium Goals by pledging to allocate at least 15% of domestic national budgets to health. Yet nine years later, the pledge remains largely unmet. However, this paper notes that the problem is not only that the Abuja 15% Commitment has not been met by the majority of AU member states. Instead, more broad based social development investment is required in addition to the 15% pledge. In addition to this, the Abuja 15% commitment as it presently stands contains an inbuilt flaw that needs to be corrected – both in content, and in the process through which the commitment was reached. The paper concludes that we should no longer refer to 'health financing' in Africa, but rather aim for investment in integrated and needs-based health, population and social development. In other words, we need to go from just 15% to 15%+.