 The WHO has recently published a report which looks at various health indicators on the African continent. The Actors of African Health Statistics 2022 gauges the overall health situation in Africa by measuring certain key statistics. The picture is not pretty one. In the past couple of years, the COVID-19 pandemic has often been blamed for the deteriorating health situation on the continent and elsewhere. But how much can COVID be blamed? And how much to the severe shortages in funding and staffing contribute to the health crisis in Africa? Jyotsna Singh from the People's Health Movement talks about the major findings of the report and answers these questions. The report we are talking about is Atlas of African Health Statistics 2022, which was released earlier this month by WHO Africa region. And it has very worrisome trends that it shows. So what this Atlas does is that it gives you an analysis of what has been the trend over the past few years and what can be expected in the coming years if the trend continues. So going by that, what it estimates is that in terms of maternal mortality, the rate is really going to be high. 390 women out of every 100,000 birds will die by 2030, the year 2030. For the global average, that number stands at 211. So it is almost the double of the global average. And when we talk about global average, we know that it includes developed countries but a lot of developing countries from Asia and Latin America and elsewhere as well. And also the target, actually the Sustainable Development Goals target was 70 maternal deaths per 100,000 birds. So that was the target. From 70, what Africa will have is 390. So that is the situation we are dealing with. As far as infant mortality rate stands, it is 72 per 1,000 birds, which the target is actually 54 deaths per 1,000 birds by 2030. Again, which is a problematic situation. So it looks like that the report shows on other health indicators also Africa is not really in a great situation. As a continent as a whole, despite all its diversity. So the world needs to be doing something about it and looks like we are not doing. But maternal deaths and infant mortality being high shows that the women and children are among the worst receivers of all kind of discrimination that is happening against Africa. And when I say this discrimination, what do I mean by that? If you the report goes on to discuss the reasons and as we have come to now here one reason all the time over the past two years is COVID-19 pandemic, right? That you have COVID-19 and that is the reason why countries are doing bad on all other diseases. The problem that you give COVID as the reason for everything going wrong, but it is not that the continent or the other countries were doing better before the COVID pandemic started. We were not going to meet the sustainable development goals targets even then. So at one level, COVID has come to become an excuse. But for a moment, even if we go by that argument, that COVID is the reason. Look at the vaccination rates in Africa, our world in data. If you look at the statistics, they're worrisome for Africa. They're also in terms of vaccination, only 32% of the African continent has been vaccinated till now with one dose. So which means out of these 32% people, everybody hasn't got two doses even. And whereas if we look at the other continents, Europe stands at 70%, North America at 76%, Asia at 76%. So Africa as a continent is really lagging behind even in COVID situation. So we were neglecting an entire continent before COVID. We have neglected an entire continent after that. And therefore that argument doesn't support their argument regarding COVID also. And just to give a little more details, you know, what is the rate of vaccination in Mali today? It is 13%. We have 19% in Burkina Faso. We have 12% in Cameroon. And all of this has happened because the way the big pharma behaved during COVID where they just did not supply enough vaccines to Africa, the way the developed countries did not lift patent barriers or work towards that so that an entire continent can actually, people can access vaccines that time. And it is not only the case with COVID vaccines, the Atlas, the report shows, for all other vaccine preventable diseases also, Africa has seen a spike in 2022. For example, measles, measles has increased by 400%. This is not a joke. So I think we always knew the way exploitation has happened over the years for the African continent because of the larger international politics and the history of colonialism and continued exploitation after that, which impacts social sector indicators like health and education badly. So that has always been the case. But now in the name of COVID, it has just become an excuse to neglect an already neglected region even further. And I think we should all be gearing up and questioning this, what is happening to millions of people in one continent and not allow this to happen or continue. Africa has always faced shortages of health workers. And there have been repeated calls for increasing the numbers. So if we see in the African region, only 65% of births are attended by skilled health personnel. It is the lowest globally. And the 2030, the target of sustainable development goals is 90%. So 65% only versus 90%. And that is because of the shortages that exist among the health workers. It has among the lowest of the proportion of health workers in the world. And there are a lot of reasons for that as well. One being WHO and the other agencies are really not gearing up to ensure that this gap is fulfilled. It is completely left to the humanitarian organizations to manage, rather than building the capacity of these countries. And in terms so that these countries actually rely on services in other countries to go and take services whenever they can afford. So it's become a different kind of a market and you don't want to lose that market and therefore you will not build the capacity in the region also. So that is another problem which the continent is facing.