Govt wants ‘realistic targets’ as Abuja Declaration comes under review
This comes as CSOs meet to review how the 2001 Abuja Declaration has been implemented and reframed ahead of a summit of AU heads of states slated for July 14. Maimuna Mohammed, director for partnership and coordination at Nigeria’s Agency for Control of AIDS, said Nigeria wanted “realistic demands that government can provide within its […]
This comes as CSOs meet to review how the 2001 Abuja Declaration has been implemented and reframed ahead of a summit of AU heads of states slated for July 14.
Maimuna Mohammed, director for partnership and coordination at Nigeria’s Agency for Control of AIDS, said Nigeria wanted “realistic demands that government can provide within its capacity, and also thinking outside the box-not relying wholly on the government.”
She said CSOs were indispensable to implementation of policies because “they are the ones that work at the point of care-where we cannot go, they are always there.”
The meeting of CSOs ahead of the AU summit seeks targets, time frame and responsibility of new policies that governments will make, along with plans to “check ourselves as we go along,” said Maimuna.
“We will not allow it to reach a point where we come back every two years. Before that two years, a lot [more] lives must have been lost. This is the time for the civil society to put their experiences together and be able to advise the government on how to move forward and what are the roles and responsibilities of each one of us because it affects all of us.”
CSOs like Evidence for Action working in Africa are worried that governments have largely failed to increase health spending as they pledged 12 years ago and raised concern about financial accountability and the place of maternal and child health issues in broader agenda for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
United Nations Population Fund wants sexual and reproductive health issues to emphasise family planning, which can easily be integrated into the three diseases on discussion, as well as quality delivery “to ensure young women and girls are able to access integrated services that benefit them,” said Dr Margaret Anyetei, senior regional advisor for HIV/AIDS at UNFPA’s Johannesburg office for Eastern and Southern Africa.