PHA-Exchange> Debt cancellation sign-on letter for healthprofessionals

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> Debt cancellation sign-on letter for health professionals
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 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 Octo-
> ber 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
> aidsact at phrusa.org <mailto:aidsact at phrusa.org> 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 Depart-
> ment, or other G-7 leaders and finance ministries. To partici-
> pate 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 X, 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 coun-
> tries 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 sys-
> tems, 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 dis-
> cussed at the meeting of G-7 finance ministers this October 1.
> 
> We know that poor countries need this debt relief urgently. Af-
> rican countries alone are collectively spending about $15 bil-
> lion per year servicing their debts to wealthy creditors, in-
> cluding 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 re-
> gional 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 devel-
> oping 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 Af-
> rica 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 con-
> ditions 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 pa-
> tients, 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 in-
> fections 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 high-
> est attainable standard of health. Indeed, debt relief that
> countries have received under the Heavily Indebted Poor Coun-
> tries (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 receiv-
> ing 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 coun-
> tries including Uganda and Cameroon have used debt relief sav-
> ings to help finance HIV/AIDS programs.
> 
> Debt cancellation is an excellent investment not only in peo-
> ple's health, but also in countries' economic well-being. In-
> creased spending by impoverished countries in health, education,
> and other fields that promote human development, which will re-
> sult from debt cancellation, goes hand-in-hand with economic
> growth. As WHO's Commission on Macroeconomics and Health has
> highlighted, investments in health will increase worker produc-
> tivity, creating economic gains that would far exceed the ini-
> tial cost to creditors of debt relief. Debt cancellation will
> help put countries that are economically marginalized and heav-
> ily dependent on foreign aid onto paths towards economic auton-
> omy and integration in the world economy. By contrast, without
> debt cancellation and other investments to reverse the spread of
> and treat people with HIV/AIDS, decreased worker productivity
> will make countries increasingly dependent on foreign assistance
> and unable to participate in the global economy.
> 
> We therefore urge you to support 100% multilateral debt cancel-
> lation for impoverished countries, including HIPC countries and
> as well as non-HIPC countries that are in need of this relief.
> We hope that your finance ministers will announce your govern-
> ments' support for such an initiative at their October 1 meet-
> ing. And we encourage you to work with countries whose debts are
> cancelled to ensure that their savings from debt payments are
> used on poverty reduction and human development. Countries can
> establish mechanisms to ensure that savings from debt services
> payments are used to reduce poverty and to promote human devel-
> opment. Uganda has established a Poverty Action Fund into which
> savings from debt relief are channeled, and which includes a se-
> ries of procedures to ensure that the debt relief savings are
> well spent. Other countries, including Tanzania and Malawi, have
> established similar mechanisms.
> 
> We also encourage you to work towards a permanent solution to
> the debt of impoverished countries - including for countries
> that do not receive 100% multilateral debt cancellation and for
> any new debt assumed by those countries whose debts are can-
> celled - by creating a new understanding of what level of debt
> countries are expected to repay. In particular, we urge you to
> announce that from this time forward, countries will be neither
> obliged nor expected to make debt payments that would compromise
> their ability to meet their people's basic needs or otherwise
> fulfill their people's human rights.
> 
> We are health professionals. Our job is to heal. So it pains us
> to see debt payments siphoning away funds that could go far to-
> wards enabling our colleagues and ourselves do our jobs and meet
> the needs of the patients we serve. We fervently hope that you
> will help enable us to be the healers that we were trained to
> be.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> [To add your name, respond to this email with your full name,
> degree, affiliation, and state/country.]
> 
> CC: G-7 Finance Ministers
> G-7 Deputy Finance Ministers