International Health Professional Sign-on Letter

Support 100% Multilateral Debt Cancellation (a sign-on letter and action alert from Physicians for Human Rights)
The debt relief movement is poised for a historic day this October 1st when G-7 finance ministers discuss 100% multilateral debt cancellation for impoverished countries. Debt cancellation would free up significant funds for development, including fighting AIDS and strengthening health systems. You can help make this happen in two ways.
1. If you are a health professional, please lend your name to an international health professional sign on letter that will reach all G-7 finance ministers and presidents/prime ministers before this important meeting. This letter is copied below. If you would like to add your name, please respond by September 20th to [email protected] with your full name, degree, affiliation, and state/country.
2. If you are not a health professional, please consider e-mailing or calling the White House or the US Treasury Department, or other G-7 leaders and finance ministries. To participate in the campaign and find talking points and additional background information (including contact information for the White House and the US Treasury Department), please go to: http://www.phrusa.org/campaigns/aids/action_debt_relief.html
International Health Professional Sign-on Letter
September, 2004
Dear G-7 Presidents and Prime Ministers:
We write to you as health professionals from diverse countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, Europe, and Australia who strongly support debt cancellation for poor countries. Debt cancellation is a prescription urgently needed to help heal seriously ailing health systems – some of which cannot even provide minimal care – in many of the countries in which we live and work.
Debt cancellation would free large sums of money, funds that should be used to build stronger and more equitable health systems, which are desperately needed if the fight against AIDS and other killer diseases is ever to be won. Right now we are losing that fight. AIDS alone kills about 3 million people per year, as another 5 million people becoming infected with HIV annually. At the end of June 2004, fewer than 10% of people in developing countries in urgent need of AIDS treatment were receiving it. In light of the health crises that many of our countries face, debt cancellation is necessary on human rights and humanitarian grounds. We therefore urge you to endorse 100% multilateral debt cancellation for impoverished countries when the issue is discussed at the meeting of G-7 finance ministers this October 1.
We know that poor countries need this debt relief urgently. African countries alone are collectively spending about $15 billion per year servicing their debts to wealthy creditors, including multilateral institutions. The fifteen focus countries of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief spent $10.3 billion servicing their debts in 2001; this is more than the $9 billion these countries are scheduled to receive over the Emergency Plan’s entire five years. The World Bank, IMF, and regional development banks are typically the largest creditors of the most impoverished nations.
Relief from debt could be instrumental in enabling countries to meet AIDS treatment targets, as well as other health goals. Your governments all support the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) 3 by 5 initiative, which aims to get 3 million people in developing and middle-income countries on AIDS treatment by the end of 2005. Yet treatment goals cannot be achieved without health workers. And as so many of us know through our own experiences, many countries, particularly in Africa, have nowhere near the necessary numbers of health personnel. For example, WHO and the World Bank have reported that Tanzania and Chad, both countries that would benefit greatly from debt cancellation, require their health workforces to triple and quadruple in size, respectively, to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
The connection between suffering health systems and the debt payments that limit funds available to them is palpable. To a significant degree, the severe shortage of health workers in Africa is a symptom of acute underinvestment in health systems, many of which suffer from too few staff, too few supplies, and too few drugs. This underinvestment is a central cause of the migration of health professionals to wealthy nations, where health systems are stronger and pay is better. Creating the conditions that will enable health professionals to remain in their home countries and allow them to provide the best care possible for their patients will cost money. Health care workers will continue to leave if they are unable to meet the charge of our professions: serving our patients. Our colleagues will continue to emigrate so long as they do not have medicines for their patients, or functioning equipment, or proper supervision. And they will continue to leave so long as they cannot support their families or be confident of their own safety. They need fair salaries, equipment to protect themselves from occupational infections of HIV and other diseases, and psychosocial support to help cope with the constant death and stressors they face.
Full multilateral debt cancellation for impoverished nations could go a long way towards meeting people’s right to the highest attainable standard of health. Indeed, debt relief that countries have received under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative has already begun to do so. In Malawi, savings from debt relief have paid for extra staff and support in primary health centers, nurse training, and improving the supply of essential drugs in health facilities. In Mozambique, debt relief funds helped increase the number of children receiving immunizations for tetanus, whooping cough, and diphtheria. Debt relief savings have also helped fund primary health care in Uganda, including salaries of health care workers, while countries including Uganda and Cameroon have used debt relief savings to help finance HIV/AIDS programs.