Lets improve the health sector... Hands off FISP

Civil Society Organisations working in public health, HIV and Aids management sector have spoken to parliament. Their words are in bold “Reduce the budget for Fertiliser Input Subsidy Program FISP and Internal travel and top up the health allocation in the 2013/2014 National Budget”.

Malawi committed itself alongside many other African states in 2001 to allocate at least 15 percent of their budgets to health. So any initiative that drives the authorities into action towards improved public health care delivery system needs to be applauded. The system needs to be given life, it has been dead for long.

The call by the Civil Society Organisations comes when the world is fewer than 1000 days before the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals in 2015 and as a country we need to be moving towards that. 

Yes we need to cut some allocations in the National Budget to benefit other key budgetary lines but to reduce the K118 billion FISP budget mmmmh, I will choose to disagree there but agree on the internal travel budget. I know the legislatures wouldn’t even start tampering with this budgetary line because doing so will be risking their political career but the opposition dominated house will jump to the idea of cutting the internal travel budget. The FISP is the life line to their staying put in parliament but the internal travel is as well as equipping your enemy with plenty of ammunition.

I know the FISP has for years been dodged with challenges ranging from corruption, sand fertiliser, bloated number of beneficiaries and theft, just to a mention a few, but we can’t afford to do away or to reduce the budgetary allocation for a program that has contributed towards the achievement of households and national food security in Malawi which in turn has impacted on economic and social development positively. 

That now takes me to the attainment of the MDGs. The MDG Report 2013 titled “Assessing progress in Africa toward the Millennium Development Goals” prepared by the African Union Commission (AUC), UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) highlighted the fact that Africa is making great strides in the execution of many MDG targets yet serious challenges remain on the ground.

The situation in Malawi is no different, we are on course yes but still facing more challenges in some crucial sectors.

Rated among the 20 best performing countries in Africa that are making progress on attaining the Goals, we are on track with MDG 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education, MDG 3: Promote gender equality and empower women, MDG 6: Combat HIV and Aids, TB, malaria and other diseases and MDG 8: Global partnerships for development.

Goals which are off track include MDG 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, MDG 4: Reduce child mortality, MDG 5: Improve maternal health and MDG 7: Ensure environmental sustainability.

In as much as we are singing success in some areas, we don’t need to relax, we need to steer the wheel towards the enhancement of such on track sectors and find solutions to address the off track targets. For example in order for us to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger investing in subsidised farm input is a welcome development. This in turn will translate into low food prices due to increased crop production and an increase in growth of the agricultural sector for economic development.

I have said it many times that the health sector in the country needs serious intervention. My heart bleeds when I look at the shambolic state of our public health care delivery system. Nothing seems to be moving forward. In terms of funding, we are at 12%, we can’t even make it as a priority to        at least allocate more funds to the sector but all we can do is fund President Joyce Banda’s many trips where she will be going around distributing cows in the name of development when deep down our hearts we know and she knows that it’s nothing but a campaign trail.

If we want to be talking about development, let’s improve the health sector. Let’s increase funding, we can’t fail to get the resources from other allocations I guess.

As the CSOs are asking the MPs to take on a hard look at the underfunding of the health sector and how this is increasingly putting the lives of their constituents and the citizenry of Malawi in danger I would also urge the MPs to not create another problem in yet another crucial sector. Both sectors need serious attention for us to attain the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.