Nations discuss new Health Policy to address emerging challenges during disasters in Africa

Rumbidzayi Zinyuke in MARRAKECH, Morocco

Experts from more than 80 countries across the world have gathered here to discuss the drafting of a common health policy for Africa that seeks to guide the continent’s response to the emergence of risks and crises related to diseases, epidemics, climate change, water scarcity, and food security.

The second edition of the African conference on Health Harm Reduction is running under the theme “Health in Africa: Water, Environment and Food Security” and serves as a forum to shed light on the current state of healthcare and food security systems while coming up with effective preventive measures to mitigate the crises.

Speaking during the opening session of the symposium, AHHR conference Secretary General Dr Tendai Mhiza said it was important for all stakeholders to be part of the drafting of an important health policy.

“We are all here for a single purpose, to talk about health harm reduction and also to talk about south-south collaboration and how we can move forward in the world. The Hippocratic oath that a lot of the medical professionals swear to speaks about doing no harm, here we talk about at least doing as little harm as possible. We are here to let Africa lead in finding sovereign health solutions that we can share with the world,” she said.

She said less than half of African citizens had access to the healthcare that they needed and this was a good reason to come up with tailored policies to address these needs.

Dr Mhizha also said the conference would take the recommendations made the experts based on the health needs of Africa in line with SDG 3 to lead a solidarity movement across the world.

“Since last year, we have been working on that declaration to build it into a living document which is the African Health Charter. We will build on that this year, focussing on three very important areas of the SDGs; being water, environment and food security,” she said.

The First AHHR conference held last year came up with recommendations and the current programme will build on this to formulate new binding recommendations that will guide policy makers in crafting robust health policies and systems.

The conference comes barely a few weeks after the worst earthquake in decades hit Morocco, killing nearly 3000 people and injuring thousands others.