HARARE, June 28– The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is facing an estimated 10 billion U.S. dollars health financing gap due to dwindling external support, the SADC Secretariat has said.
The declining external support puts three decades of gains in HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, and nutrition at risk, the Secretariat said in a statement on Saturday ahead of a joint meeting of SADC Ministers of Finance and Health scheduled for July 2-3 in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital.
“The meeting comes as external health financing is reducing faster than domestic systems are adapting,” the statement noted. The meeting, mandated under the African Union and SADC commitments on investing in health, aims to adopt a ministerial outcome statement and a health financing strategic action framework.
According to the secretariat, ministers will consider emergency fiscal responses, domestic resource mobilization, public financial management reform, pooled procurement, local manufacturing, and innovative financing.
They will also review the bloc’s preparedness for Ebola and other pandemics, framing health as a strategic investment in human capital rather than a net expenditure.
The ministerial outcome statement is expected to provide quantified commitments, including progressive annual increases in domestic health investment, a tracked roadmap, and a unified SADC position for negotiating with partners. (Namibia Daily News / Xinhua)
