« NGOs’ policies, as
regard HEALTH CARE, are they adapted to the needs of populations in Sub-Saharan
Africa?”
I. INTRODUCTION
In their fight, as regard
health, Sub-Saharan
countries are heavily handicapped. These countries missing
of financial means and which must face other expensive urgencies, the problems
of health are for them “the water drop which makes overflow the vase”.
World recession, famines,
natural disasters, wars, habits and superstitions do not arrange anything.
Equipments and necessary drugs to look after the majority of frequent
infections from which patients suffer are extremely expensive for African
populations; many of the large hospitals are over-populated nowadays, fall into
the state of complete decay and lack personnel. So that certain patients are
returned home to die on their premises making places for others, increasingly
many.
In a continent where the large
number of the population lacks pure water, does not have satisfactory sanitary
facilities…
II. PROBLEMS OF HEALTH
Components of health from which
NGOs refer to in Sub-Saharan Africa are related to the following frequent
factors:
A. Bursting of
families Many
men from 20 to 40 years old are obliged to leave their wives and families to go
to work far away as minors, workmen in plantations or factories, or as road
drivers. Emigrants (to other Sub-Saharan countries) do not have easy life.
Separated from their wives and families, they must struggle to find a
dwelling-place and an employment downtown. Difficulties which emigrants meet to
provide for their needs and those of their families remained in their home
countries lead them to have feelings of impotence and disappointment which
often encourage them to neglect completely their responsibilities.
B. Problems of alimentation
1)
Deficiency deficit:
2)
Malnutrition surplus.
C. Conflicts
It
is also necessary to evoke civil wars and other political conflicts which trail
in their wake millions of refugees.
“Civil
war means collapse of social standards as regard behaviors”.
Refugees,
unceasingly in displacement can constitute a source of infection. War is not
only political, but also social and psychological. From the already rudimentary
and inappropriate medical structures, arises difficulty of inaccessibility to
the needy zones due to conflicts.
D. Disease and poverty
Diseases
spread easily when people live piled up ones on others under deplorable
conditions. It should absolutely be understood that extreme misery, desperate
financial situations and their consequences offer an extremely fertile ground
to infectious diseases and make inoperative techniques to the rest of humanity.
Under these conditions, it is not easy to circumscribe an epidemic, a great
number of people move.
E. Coming back of old diseases
Formerly
dammed up diseases “reappear with an extreme virulence.” Majority of progresses
made during last decades in the field of health are called nowadays in
question.
F. Components of the reproductive
health
They
are summarized in six points as follow:
1)
Very high maternal mortality: we have
1,289 deaths for 100,000 births in the Democratic Republic of Congo;
2)
Youthful-infant mortality from 0 to 5
years old whose national average is 213 for the Democratic Republic of Congo;
3)
Infant mortality from 0 to 1 year old;
4)
Strong fecundity of women whose average
is of 7 children;
5)
High HIV/Aids prevalence affecting
young people;6)
Sexual violence (widespread especially
in periods of conflicts).
III. SOCIAL BY EFFECT
These
epidemics affect not only the Health System, but also whole of the social and
economic sectors. Eighty percent of patients have between 16 and 40 years old,
the most productive age bracket of the Society gathering the majority of people
who bring back wages and therefore, support their families. When these people
fall sick and die, children and old people find themselves without support.
Everywhere in Africa, from custom, orphans are
adopted by their families. But nowadays when parents die, grand-parents and
other members of the families are often too old or have already too many
difficulties to provide the needs of their own children. Given up, orphans come
to enlarge the rows of children of streets (mudlarks).
IV. WHAT IS MADE
Several
private, public or international programs are already set up to try, as far as
possible, to solve problems raised in Sub-Saharan Africa as regard health.
These programs thus allow:
·
Access to information and qualified
personnel;
·
Access to Health Care Services;
·
Rehabilitation of hospital structures.
As a matter
of fact, NGOs’policy of action relies on the following points:
·
Geographical accessibility in period of
conflicts;
·
Financial accessibility for the
extremely poor families;
·
Sociocultural accessibility I the event
of taboos.
Nowadays in Uganda,
for example, more than 600 organizations and humane agencies (national and
international) fight against the HIV/Aids propagation.
They created
in all the country a network of information centers, on the HIV/Aids which
sensitizes the public by various means: Theatre, dance, song, television,
radio, newspapers and telephone.
In the
Democratic Republic of Congo, on the other hand, in addition to private NGOs,
certain western countries act through certain NGOs by well directed
contributions and established by these countries.
And other
countries, for lack of experiment on the country, as regard health, work in
partnership with those which have the control of it. It is the case of the
belgo-japanese co-operation program in the fight against trypanosomiase (formerly
eradicated).
Belgium and France
intervene in the purchase of equipments and the training of the Health care
workers either directly or through NGOs.
The United States of America
act through organizations such as the World Food Program, the USAID…, within
the framework of alimentation.
The German
government acts, for example, through GTZ within the framework of blood
transfusion.
NGOs such as
the ICRC and ACF (Action Against Hunger) work within drilling of drinking water
wells.
MSF (France,
Belgium or Spain) also
deals with medical sector of the Sub-Saharan populations. And examples abound…
V.
CONCLUSION
I estimate,
in what relates to me, that policies of NGOs on Health Care are adapted to our
needs. But the inexistence of reliable statistics in Sub-Saharan Africa, the
unimportant number of epidemiologists (7 only for all the Central
Africa region and only one is a Physician) do not make it
possible.
The fact is
unfortunately that NGOs find on their way more questions than answers.