Nobel Prize winners urge Africa to take action

22 Jan 2007

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and fellow Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai have said that African governments have failed to deliver on a 2001 health pledge – costing millions of lives.

The pair said that a number of governments promised to spend 15 per cent of their budgets on helping people who were diseased or sick but that few had kept to their words.

Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai is now urging African citizens to take action, saying: "The governments are to blame of course, but nothing has been done about it because ordinary people have not demanded it.

"We can only get governments to honour their promises if they think their existence is threatened."

Her comments were made at the World Social Forum, an annual meeting of global activists which this year is being hosted by Africa for the first time.

At the 2001 African Union (AU) summit in Nigeria, governments across Africa pledged to allocate at least 15 per cent of national budgets to healthcare.

But the activists claim that out of the AU's 53 member states, including those with the worst public health crises, few had begun meeting this pledge.

Mr Tutu said in a letter read to delegates at the forum that if nothing was done, "our continent will die out before our eyes".

He added: "An estimated 40 million Africans have died from health-related conditions as a result of the Abuja commitment not being met.

"This surpasses the total deaths from all modern African and global conflicts including the two world wars."

©