Abstract
BackgroundMajority of the countries in the World Health Organization (WHO) African Region are not on track to achieve the health-related Millennium Development Goals, yet even more ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 3 on heath, have been adopted. This paper highlights the challenges - amplified by the recent Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in West Africa - that require WHO and other partners’ dialogue in support of the countries, and debate on how WHO can leverage the existing space and place to foster health development dialogues in the Region.DiscussionTo realise SDG 3 on ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages, the African Region needs to tackle the persistent weaknesses in its health systems, systems that address the social determinants of health and national health research systems. The performance of the third item is crucial for the development and innovation of systems, products and tools for promoting, maintaining and restoring health in an equitable manner.Under its new leadership, the WHO Regional Office for Africa is transforming itself to galvanise existing partnerships, as well as forging new ones, with a view to accelerating the provision of timely and quality support to the countries in pursuit of SDG 3. WHO in the African Region engages in dialogues with various stakeholders in the process of health development. The EVD outbreak in West Africa accentuated the necessity for optimally exploiting currently available space and place for health development discourse. There is urgent need for the WHO Regional Office for Africa to fully leverage the space and place arenas of the World Health Assembly, WHO Regional Committee for Africa, African Union, Regional economic communities, Harmonization for Health in Africa, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, African Development Bank, professional associations, and WHO African Health Forum, when it is created, for dialogues to mobilise the required resources to give the African Region the thrust it needs to attain SDG 3.ConclusionsThe pursuit of SDG 3 amidst multiple challenges related to political leadership and governance, weak health systems, sub-optimal systems for addressing the socioeconomic determinants of health, and weak national health research systems calls for optimum use of all the space and place available for regional health development dialogues to supplement Member States’ efforts.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1452-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Majority of the countries in the World Health Organization (WHO) African Region are not on track to achieve the health-related Millennium Development Goals, yet even more ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3) on heath, have been adopted
The pursuit of SDG 3 amidst multiple challenges related to political leadership and governance, weak health systems, sub-optimal systems for addressing the socioeconomic determinants of health, and weak national health research systems calls for optimum use of all the space and place available for regional health development dialogues to supplement Member States’ efforts
It provides an overview of the situation of the socioeconomic indicators, health, health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), health systems, and national health research systems (NHRS) in the World Health Organization (WHO) African Region
Summary
To stand a chance of achieving SDG 3 on ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages [1], the African Region’s countries urgently need to tackle the persistent weaknesses in their national and local health systems, in the systems that deal with the other basic needs such as education, food, shelter, sanitation and clean water, and in NHRS. Its contribution to the regional health governance may involve (1) intense dialogues on pertinent/topical regional public health challenges and issues before they are tabled by the WHO Secretariat at the RC and WHA; (2) clarification of roles and responsibilities of different actors, with a view to generating consensus on the division of labour, avoiding fragmentation and jettisoning duplication of effort; (3) harmonising and aligning support to countries in line with the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action; (4) drawing up a regional health development governance code or charter for the behaviour and actions of ARHF members; (5) creating a public health movement for proactively advocating among the countries for the full implementation of pertinent AU decisions and WHA and RC resolutions; (6) monitoring progress in the implementation of health-related SDGs; (7) amicably resolving differences between ARHF members; and (8) mutually sharing information and evidence Since it is the WHO Regional Office for Africa that will have created the ARHF space, there is a risk that it might have disproportionate power over the forum than would non-state actors. The Regional Office has already developed the “Africa Health Transformation Programme 2015–2020: A vision for universal health coverage” with lucid strategic actions and deliverables and an implementation and accountability framework [124]
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