In sub-Saharan Africa, people are dying of treatable and preventable diseases simply because there are not enough doctors, nurses, and community health workers to treat them.
The African Health Capacity Investment Act of 2007 would be the first piece of legislation in the House of Representatives to address Africa's health workforce crisis, a central obstacle to scaling up essential health services and meeting global health commitments, including for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and maternal and child health. The Senate version, the Durbin Bill, recently cleared a committee and awaits a vote on the floor.
A list of recent co-sponsors is on the Library of Congress website.
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For any questions about this action or composing your letter, please contact, Jirair Ratevosian at 617-301-4214 or healthactionaids@phrusa.org.
Subject:
Dear [ Decision Maker ],
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The African Health Capacity Investment Act of 2007 (HR 3812) would provide $150 million in FY 2008, $200 million in FY 2009, and $250 million in FY 2010 to pay for safer working conditions, training and recruitment of health workers (especially in underserved rural areas) and better health systems management. The World Health Organization estimates that sub-Saharan Africa is suffering a shortage of more than 800,000 doctors, nurses, and midwives, and an overall shortfall of nearly 1.5 million health workers of all kinds. The problem is crippling health care in many African countries. In Uganda, hospitals have shut down for lack of a single health worker to care for patients, and in some areas a single doctor or nurse may be on call 24 hours a day and seven days per week to care for hundreds of extremely ill patients every week. In Ethiopia, there are only 2,000 doctors for 75 million people; this is comparable to 16 doctors in all of Washington DC coping with simultaneous pandemics of AIDS, TB and malaria killing hundreds of people every day. In fact, there are more than 4,000 doctors in Washington, DC to care for its 600,000 people.The causes of the shortage are complex, and include HIV/AIDS, poor working conditions, insufficient capacity to train new health workers, the overall lack of funding for health, ceilings on government wage legislation, and the brain drain of health workers to countries like the United States, which need to do more to address their own health worker shortages. A task force of the WHO and Harvard, the Joint Learning Initiative, estimated $8 billion over five years is needed to double the health workforce in sub-Saharan Africa. Strengthening the health workforce in Africa will bring enormous health benefits to millions of people and save untold numbers of lives. Please make passage of the African Health Capacity Investment Act of 2007 (HR 3812) one of your priorities.
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