Kigali, 31 August 2009 -- The 59th session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa opened on Monday in Kigali with a call by President Paul Kagame of Rwanda for strong leadership and accountability in countries in the WHO African Region in order to reverse the decades-long poor state of health systems in Member States.

President Kagame told Health Ministers and heads of delegations to the meeting: "No amount of material or financial resources can transform a nation without a clear political and policy purpose, and a deliberate strategy and commitment to continuously improve the conditions of its most important asset - people ".

He added that adherence to the principles of good leadership, community empowerment and accountability had resulted in Rwanda making significant progress towards universal health insurance - from 7% in 2003 to 85% in 2008.

The same factors, he said, had also led to significant achievements in the country's anti-malaria campaign, including a 97% household coverage for indoor residual spraying. "It is not pre-ordained that our continent must remain impoverished, illiterate, and in poor health - and if we can make the noted modest achievements in Rwanda, a country that is by no means rich, we can do better regionally and continentally", the Rwandan leader said.

In her wide-ranging speech, WHO Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan, said: "Money is important, but money alone will not transform the prospects for better health in Africa. The policies must be right and the money must be used effectively and efficiently".

She stated that it was time to stop talking about Africa in sweeping generalizations because while the Region as a whole may not reach the Millennium Development Goals, there were bright sparks of success in many areas of health in many countries.

Dr Chan also noted that too many international policies and systems created benefits that favoured the rich but had no rules that guarantee fair distribution of these benefits. "As a result, differences within and between countries in income levels, in opportunities, and in health status are greater today than at any time in history," the WHO Director-General said.

On the current Pandemic Influenza (H1N1) 2009, Dr Chan stated that the disease would reveal the consequences of decades of failure to invest adequately in basic health systems and services in the African Region.

She, however, added that to mitigate the impact of the pandemic, she had secured pledges totaling 150 million doses of pandemic influenza vaccine for use in the developing world.

Addressing the meeting, the WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Luis Sambo, stated that since he assumed office five years ago, he had taken measures to strengthen resource mobilization to Member States; increase support for health systems; strengthen and expand partnerships for health; promote the scaling up of proven essential interventions, and enhance responses to key determinants of health.

Specific actions taken include a fundamental restructuring of the Regional Office including the delegation of resources and technical cooperation functions to three inter-country teams in Ouagadougou, Harare and Libreville; support for actions aimed at maximizing synergy and coherence among international health partners, resulting in improved alignment with national health priorities, polices and systems, and support for efforts of Member States to achieve improvements set out in the Millennium Development Goals.

Others are support to countries for health policy formulation and strategic planning; contributing to raising awareness on environmental health risks, harmful use of alcohol, tobacco use, high risk sexual behaviour and other behavioural risk factors.

Dr Sambo expressed gratitude to the Health Ministers and their delegations for the privilege given him to serve the Organization as Regional Director for the past five years and expressed his willingness "to serve Africa and WHO for a longer period of time to be able to consolidate the foundation that has been laid in the past few years."

For more information, please contact :

In Kigali:

Samuel Ajibola; E-mail: ajibolas [at] afro.who.int (ajibolas[at]afro[dot]who[dot]int) Tel: (+250) 0750779618

Flavienne Issembe; E-mail: issembef [at] afro.who.int (issembef[at]afro[dot]who[dot]int) Tel: (+250) 0783607339

Joana Teixeira ; E-mail : teixeiram [at] afro.who.int (teixeiram[at]afro[dot]who[dot]int) Tel : (+250) 0785306987