Meeting in Nairobi, civil society organizations from across east and southern Africa have launched a campaign aimed at ensuring access to essential medicines. The campaign, supported by the Open Society Institute, will focus on ending widespread "stock-outs" of medicines in public health facilities in Africa.
Throughout Africa, at any given moment, public health facilities have in stock only about half of a core set of medicines used to treat common diseases such as malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea, HIV, TB, diabetes, and hypertension—all of which are among the highest causes of death in Africa.
These stock-outs can have devastating impacts on poor people, especially those living in rural areas. Access to free or cheap medicines determines whether people live or die, suffer pain and discomfort, or have their ailments cured, recover from illness, or endure lifelong disease.
Campaign participants are calling on governments in Africa to commit to having essential medicines on pharmacy shelves, with the slogan, "Stop Stock-Outs, and Ensure Access to Essential Medicines for All!"
Specifically, the campaign is calling on governments and health departments to enact the following recommendations:
- Give financial and operational autonomy to the national medicines procurement and supply agency.
- Install civil society representation on the board of the national medicines procurement and supply agency.
- End corruption in the medicine supply chain to stop theft and diversion of essential medicines.
- Provide a dedicated budget line for essential medicines.
- Fulfill commitments to spend 15 percent of national budgets on health care.
- Provide free essential medicines at all public health institutions.
At the regional level, the campaign will be spearheaded by HAI-Africa and Oxfam. There will also be country-level campaigns in Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, and Madagascar. The country partners are listed online at http://stopstockouts.org/partners.
The Kenya campaign launched the "Stop Stock-Outs" campaign in Nairobi on February 26, 2009. The launch included a press conference and a public forum on medicines. The forum included testimony from consumers, a recited verse on health and human rights, short presentations by policymakers and civil society, and an open plenary discussion.
Further information on the campaign is available at stopstockouts.org.