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$1.7 Billion Needed to Improve Ebola-hit Countries' Health Care, Says Oxfam

Burgess COMMENTARY
It is very difficult to get the right level of investment in health when the only metric is money. Huge (and over the top) investments in health are made where every actor in the health business can make big money, but there is little investment in health where the outcome is amazingly good (better health throughout the society) but the people concerned are poor. We should be investing to maximize good, not merely to maximize making money. This requires a complete rethink of how we measure progress, performance and resource use in our modern socio-enviro-economic system

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Peter Burgess

$1.7 Billion Needed to Improve Ebola-hit Countries' Health Care, Says Oxfam

United Nations - The international humanitarian charity Oxfam is calling on the World Bank and major donors to raise 1.7 billion dollars to improve poor health systems in Ebola-affected countries and strengthen community networks for preventing another epidemic.

Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, said, “Communities pulling together has been vital to cutting Ebola infection rates […] But in order to be effective these networks need to work within a strong national healthcare service that is freely available to all people.”

In light of the World Bank’s talks on Ebola, set for Apr. 17 as part of the bank’s annual spring meetings in Washington DC, the focus is on the need to create a 10-year investment plan for free universal health care to ensure that countries are able tackle future disease outbreaks.

More than 10,000 people have died during the Ebola epidemic due to public health failures, remarked Byanyima. Oxfam has trained community volunteers and 1.3 million workers to visit houses and raise awareness about symptoms, good hygiene and risky behaviours, as well as supporting clinics, schools and people in quarantine with water and sanitation.

According to Oxfam, 420 million dollars is required to train more than 9,000 doctors and approximately 37,060 healthcare workers, and 297 million dollars is needed to pay their salaries.

The money is the minimum amount needed to assure health care assistance for all in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, according to Oxfam, and it would be invested in well-equipped facilities, sufficient trained staff, medical supplies and a systems of health information to strengthen community networks.

Byanyima said that, “The rise of stronger new community networks offer greater space for local people to be involved in decision making, but they have been excluded from recovery planning,” adding that this attitude should change, and donors should insist on engaging more with communities.

Building community networks is also vital to hold governments accountable for the money they spent, and if they spent it well, she remarked.

In Sierra Leone, around 12,000 children are orphans, and 180,000 people are jobless. In December 2014, in Liberia, 73 percent of people in three counties, Montserrado, Nimba and Grand Gedeh, reported dramatic economic impacts, in lost income and harvests, Oxfam researchers reported.

Oxfam urges the international community to invest in stronger public services, and to help local people to recover from the immediate psychological, social, and economic impacts left by the disease.

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VALENTINA IERI Valentina Ieri is a journalist for Inter Press Service, United Nations. Follow her on Twitter: @Valeieri