UGANDA: President Mutharika to Attend 15th AU Summit in Uganda

Date: 
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Source: 
Nyasa Times
Countries: 
Africa
Eastern Africa
Uganda
PeaceWomen Consolidated Themes: 
Human Rights

Malawi President and African Union (AU) Chairperson, Ngwazi Professor Bingu wa Mutharika this Friday leaves for Kampala, Uganda, where he will join 49 other heads of state and governments to attend the 15th Summit of the AU.

The summit, which opened on Monday amidst heavy security after the terror bombings in Kampala last week, has as its theme: “Maternal, Infant and Child health and Development in Africa”.

The theme is in line with the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals, which the 53 AU member states aspire to achieve.African countries.

Improving maternal health is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals adopted by the international community at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a woman living in sub-Saharan Africa faces a lifetime risk of dying due to pregnancy of 1 in 16 (compared with 1 in 30,000 in Western Europe).

For every woman who dies, another 20 suffer from illness and disability, like obstetric fistula, which without surgery to repair it leaves its victims incontinent social outcasts, the greatest health inequality in the world.

More than 250,000 (of the 536,000) deaths among women and girls every year as a result of complications during pregnancy and childbirth are among African women and as observed by WHO, “this is sad as Africa also contributes 60 per cent of the 9 million children under-five who die globally every year”.

In most African countries the maternal and child death rates are actually getting worse, and it is unlikely that Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 (reducing child and maternal deaths by 75 per cent by 2015 respectively) will be achieved without urgent action.

Malawi's maternal mortality rate is currently at 807 per 100,000 births and in MDG5, countries have committed to reducing the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters between 1990 and 2015.

“Achieving Millennium Development Goal 5 requires accelerating progress,” observes the AU while highlighting the steps the Union has taken to deal with reducing maternal and child mortality.

Recently, G8 leaders made a fresh commitment to invest US$5 billion to reduce maternal and child deaths in developing countries and that African leaders should meet their commitment made 11 years ago through the Abuja Declaration (2001).

African governments agreed to set aside 15 percent of national budgets to go towards health spending.

The 20th Ordinary Session of the Executive Council convenes on 22-23 July and the 15th Ordinary Session of Assembly of Heads of State and Government will be held on July 25-27.

Other issues to be discussed include peace and security, infrastructure, energy, agriculture and food security.

The nine-day summit kicked off with the opening of the 20th Ordinary Session of the Permanent Representatives Committee attended by AU Commission chairperson Jean Ping.

According to international media reports, three countries namely Madagascar, Niger and Guinea, which were suspended from AU because of unconstitutional change of governments, will not attend the meeting.

Uganda's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Guma Muganda is quoted as saying, “Forty nine delegations have arrived for the meeting. It's only countries whose suspension is still standing that will not attend the summit.” he said.

Morocco is the fourth country that will not be represented after it withdrew from the Organisation of African Union (OAU) in 1984, when a majority of African states recognized Sahrawi as a state, which Morocco had annexed in 1975.

Uganda was endorsed to host the summit during the 11th AU summit in July 2008 that took place in Egypt.