World Health Day 2024: “My health, my right”

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OPINION

By H.E Hugues Chantry, the Ambassador of Belgium

Today, as we celebrate World Health Day, the World Health Organization (WHO) draws our attention to several challenges facing the health sector, notably the barriers to passing and implementing laws to ensure universal access to health services.

All the member states of the United Nations are trying to accomplish the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) they agreed to in 2015. Among them is the SDG 3 which aims to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages” by 2030. However, in our uncertain world, we are witnessing an erosion of global health in many places, especially where the right to health remains under threat.

Like many other social sectors, the health sector continues to experience several challenges that aggravate inequalities and set back the achievements of the past. In Uganda, despite significant progress, including the attainment of Universal Health Coverage, overall determinants of health and wellbeing remain low.

With a largely burdened health system, the most vulnerable populations are at a high risk of illness and death from preventable conditions. Availability, accessibility, and affordability of essential health services continues to remain a key challenge to attaining healthy lives. It is worth noting that health challenges are not distributed equally among the population. When it comes to health equity, we see that disparities exist across regions, age, gender, education level, etc.

The theme of this year’s World Health Day commemoration is “My health, my right” and it brings to mind the old saying of the Roman poet, Virgil, “the greatest wealth is health.” Indeed, good health allows one to enjoy life to the fullest.

Access to health services that are affordable and meet the necessary quality standards, should be a right, instead of a privilege.

The right to health is a fundamental human right and both the UN declaration of human rights and the Constitution of Uganda guarantee access to health services for all. It includes creating conditions that address the “underlying determinants of health” to enable all individuals to live a healthy life. Of course, each of us can already practice healthy living at no cost: by avoiding alcohol, tobacco and drugs, we multiply our chances to live longer; by abiding by the traffic rules, we reduce the probabilities of hurting ourselves and others; a balanced diet can also prevent many problems.

The community can also adopt preventive health measures such as access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, access to safe and adequate nutrition and housing, creation of healthy working and environmentally sustainable conditions, provision of health-related education and information, attention to gender equality and non- discrimination, allowing access to health services to absolutely everybody, creation of a universal system of health protection.

Belgium, and many other partners in the European Union and international organizations have supported investments and contributed towards strengthening a right to health for all for many years. Over the last decade, Belgium has invested more than 53 million EUR (about 212 billion UGX) in Uganda for medical services, health education and nutrition, basic health care, and health policy and administrative management in addition to 20.4 million EUR for social protection programmes.

For the period 2023 – 2028, Belgium, through Enabel will implement a new 20.9 million EUR programme to enhance the right to safe and quality health care for vulnerable groups including children, girls and women, and refugees and to train nurses and midwives.

To further re-emphasize its commitment to health and well-being, Belgium in its current role of President of the Council of the European Union has prioritized “health as a right” in its development cooperation flagship. The four pillars contextualizing this flagship include health systems and social protection, strengthened EU-AU partnership, local pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity and Universal access to Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights.

A strengthened partnership between Africa and Europe in global health is envisioned. On 20 March 2024, a high-level event of the EU and AU was organized in Brussels on among others, African Health Sovereignty. Another event, “Towards Health Equity: Strong Health Systems, Universal Health coverage and social participation” will take place on 23 April bringing together policymakers, academic experts and civil society representatives from both Europe in Africa.

Given the glaring gaps in Uganda’s health sector, I would like to use this opportunity to invite the different stakeholders to reflect upon Uganda’s commitments to the health of its population. In 2023/2024 Uganda allocated 7.7% of its national budget to the health sector. This still falls far below the Abuja Declaration (2001) of 15% spending on health. It is therefore essential to further increase public spending on health.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said “of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhumane.” I therefore conclude by underscoring that it is imperative to collectively address the political, environmental, commercial and other determinants of health, to make the 2024 theme “My health, my right” a reality.

H.E Hugues Chantry is the Ambassador of Belgium to Uganda