African states fund health, enviro plans
December 6th, 2010
An African ministerial conference on Health and Environment adopted continental governance priorities from 2011, including occupational health and safety.
The Luanda Commitment, drafted in Angola in November 2010, aims at continental and national H&E risk analyses by 2012, safe work, drinking water, sanitation, hygiene services, food security, disease control, and sustainable management of forests, wetlands, water, soil, air pollution, as well as bio diversity conservation and disaster response.
The commitment programme agreed to at the two day conference includes disease vector control, and life cycle management of chemicals like pesticides, wastes, and genetically modified food.
MDGs and Libreville Declaration
Ministers of health and environment from 46 African countries now re-commit their governments to expedite implementation of the earlier Libreville Declaration drafted in Gabon in 2008, in support of African Millennium Development Goals, including goal 4 on child health, goal 5 on maternal health, goal 6 on communicable diseases, and goal 7 on environmental sustainability.
The Libreville Declaration includes 11 priorities, starting with an assessment of health and environmental risks in African countries, and joint national action plans by November 2012. Seventeen countries had already completed their H&E risk analyses.
Abjua Declaration on health
Afrrican ministers agreed to apply 15% of state budgets, and to ask for further private resources, to public and occupational health, as agreed in the Abuja Declaration of 2001, reports PANA.
At Libreville, environmental ministers agreed to ask for substantial funding increases for environmental management actions linked to public and occupational health.
The Luanda conference was co hosted by WHO and UNEP. States will also approach development banks to fund more health and environmental programmes, under a banner of climate change management, reports PANA.
A third round of the inter ministerial conference on Health and Environment in Africa is planned for 2012.
IMAGE; Several global bodies, conventions, funders, and programmes, like tropical diseases and climate change programmes, back the set of African organisations and conventions that adopted the Luanda Convention.
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