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Talking Points
- Let me take this opportunity to welcome you all to the Africa Leadership Meeting: Investing in Health.
- Africa is home to 16% of the world’s population and 24% of the world’s disease burden but accounts for just 1% of global health spending. Yet Africa’s progress in improving health outcomes has been remarkable - life expectancy has increased from 50.9 to 61.2 years, or by 20% between 2000–2016. But investments are not growing fast enough - particularly if we consider that Africa’s population will double by 2050.
- Domestic financing is critical to achieving and sustaining our efforts to achieve Africa's health and economic security. A practical example is the remarkable achievements that Africa CDC has made, together with WHO and partners in supporting members states in disease outbreaks in less that two years since it was launched in at the Summit in January 2017 by the heads of state and government.
- Investments in health need to grow at 3.3% per year for the next 30 years just for us not to fall behind population growth. Health investment will need to rise even faster to improve health outcomes.
- The Africa Leadership Meeting: Investing in Health therefore comes at a very strategic moment where increased action is needed to increase domestic investments in health.
- This meeting will foster increased commitments by African Heads of State and Government and private sector to increase public and private investments in health.
- The meeting will further seek commitments from global health financing mechanisms to increase collaboration, cooperation and co-investments in areas such as innovative financing and key systems pieces such as supply chain and data to ensure that there are synergies and efficient use of resources for better health outcomes in support of national development priorities.