Achbishop Desmond Tutu on Tuesday appealed to governments to do more to save Africa from disease.
”We cannot lose Africa,” Tutu told the 193-nation World Health Assembly. ”The cradle of humankind” is threatened by ”disease, conflict and destruction”.
Much disease is preventable if governments had the political will to spend more, the South African churchman and Nobel Peace Prize laureate told the governing body of the World Health Organisation.
He urged African leaders to make good on a 2001 commitment to allocate at least 15% of their national budgets to health.
That could prevent the unnecessary death of eight million Africans, Tutu said.
Tutu said children were dying of ”easily preventible diseases if they could but get the inexpensive vaccination inoculations”.
He said many drugs and vaccines are useless in parts of Africa where there is no electricity to keep them refrigerated.
Tutu noted that the delegates, many of whom were physicians and public-health experts, were ”particularly aware of the devastation caused by disease — TB, malaria, HIV and Aids, river blindness, polio, cholera, infant mortality, maternal illnesses”.
He praised the WHO for its ”tenacious commitment” to global health and singled out WHO director general Margaret Chan for her efforts to tackle ”the monumental health concerns of Africa and the health of women and girls”. – Sapa-AP