By: Lloyd M’bwana
The country’s social-economic and health bodies including the African Health Budget Network (AHBN) have vehemently asked Malawi Government to urgently increase access to budget information and to provide more opportunity for public engagement in the budgeting process amid escalation of new born motility rates which must be controlled.
The call comes as AHBN’s Value Our Health campaign is being launched at a session at the World/IMF Spring Meeting Civil Society Forum in Washington DC, USA on Friday, April 15, 2016.
The session is expected to look at the critical role that budget transparency and participation play in translating health commitments into more and better health spending for women and children in Africa.
The session is also bringing together the perspectives of a range of stakeholders from Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Health to civil society and the media, all of whom have an important role to play in ensuring public spending on health is in line with national priorities.
This is the reason the country’s social-economic and health bodies including MamaYe Malawi, the Malawi Economic Justice Network (MEJN) and the Malawi Health Equity Network (MEHN are joining the call for open and participatory health budgets for Malawi’s women and children and asking Government to seriously consider the “Value Our Health” campaign.
The social-economic and health bodies told The Maravi Post that are much concerned on how much is spent on different health programmes because they want better levels of health and well-being for mothers and babies.
Although, significant progress has been made in reducing child mortality rates and the for achieving the Millennium Development Goal four ahead of time, the new born mortality rate has not reduced at the same speed and 14,000 new born are dying each year, the large majority of which are preventable.
“We ask that the Government continue to show it values the people’s health by investing more in people’s health especially for mothers and new-born. We urgently need our new-born to receive a clean and safe birth, and we need funding for sanitation within our clinics. We would love if this funding was included within the next budget round”, urges Mathias Chatuluka of MamaYe Malawi.
Echoing on the same MEJN says government of Malawi must be accountable for the way they public monies are being spent on health that citizens and civil society are able to access sufficiently detailed information about actual spending and about what the results of this investment have been.
“Malawi has performed well on its budget transparency score according to the latest Open Budget Survey. We welcome the progress the country has made in providing its citizens with this vital information so that we can see how our money is spent”, says Dalitso Kubalasa, MEJN’s Executive Director.
Adding his voice, George Jobe, MHEN’s Executive Director says there is an opportunity to influence decisions during the budget process, and to provide evidence to the Government about the most important health priorities of Malawi.
“Malawi does not provide sufficient opportunity for the public to shape the health budget therefore the voice of the people must be heard during the budget process so that it reflects public priorities and government must take steps now to address this”, appeals Jobe
And this what Aminu Magashi Garba of AHBN said: “It has been shown that public participation and open budgets can improve the health of its citizens because those budgets will be more influenced by the priorities of the people who use health services every day. We see from the ‘Panama Papers’ that transparency matters because it’s our money. Imagine what $50bn could provide for Africa if it were not going elsewhere through illicit financial flows. African voices are calling for better spending on women and children. #Value Our Health”.
MamaYe is a campaign for all of us, by all of us, to ensure Malawi’s mothers and babies survive pregnancy and childbirth. MamaYe is about making life-saving changes for Malawi’s mothers and babies. It is a campaign to change fatalism to hope; helplessness to action; maternal survival from side-issue to political priority; and best guesses into hard facts.
While on other side Illicit financial flows out of Africa have become a matter of major concern because of the scale and negative impact of such flows on Africa’s development and governance agenda. The 2015 report from the African Union High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows estimates that illicit flows from Africa could be as much as US$50bn a year. This is about double the official development assistance that Africa receives.
