Aid agencies such as Oxfam have concerns that maternal and child health aid plans announced by the G8 group of nations is just an empty promise, given that overall aid is being reduced. “The G8 commitment to maternal health is extremely disappointing,” said Robert Fox, Executive Director of Oxfam Canada.
“Last year in L’Aquila the G8 committed $22 billion over three years for food security. This year when the focus is on women’s health, they can muster only $5 billion over five years, $7.3 billion, if you include the longer list of donors.”
That list includes a group of non-G8 countries as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
In Africa, Asia and Latin America nearly 1,000 women die each day in childbirth and in complications related to pregnancy, according to Oxfam.
A statement by G8 members at the end of the Huntsville summit indicates that the collective commitment could help save the lives of 1.3 million young children and 64,000 women, (based on estimates from the World Health Organisation and World Bank).
It would also help provide family planning to 12 million couples.
Individual G8 country contributions are overshadowed by frozen aid budgets. “In the end we are left with a painfully thin slice of an ever-shrinking pie.
Only by keeping their promises made in Gleneagles will we marshal the resources for bold action to tackle maternal mortality,” said Robert Fox.
Oxfam also warned that this new emphasis by the G8 on maternal health might take aid from vital areas such as education and food.
“The G8 is trying to quietly shelve their 2005 promise to deliver $50 billion in extra aid by this year, said Fox. “ Leaders must not be allowed to shirk their responsibility to the world’s poor.”
Dorothy Ngoma, the Executive Director of the National Organisation of Nurses and Midwives of Malawi who travelled to Canada for the summit acknowledged the importance of focusing on maternal health but questioned how the G8 will find the money.
“As a mid-wife, I believe it is crucial to invest in the health of mothers, but I also know the importance of food on the table and clean water to drink. No one should be forced to choose between these. New promises won’t do much good if old ones are ignored.”
In more general terms, there are concerns that promises made by the G8 in Gleneagles in 2005 to increase aid are being broken. There is an estimated $18 billion shortfall over the next two years. This represent vital medicines, children in school, help for women living in poverty and food for the hungry.
Further meeting of the G20 continued after the G8 and again, aid agencies say it missed a golden opportunity to tackle global poverty.
It debated how to make banks repay the cost of the economic crisis, said international agency Oxfam.
“The G20 ought to have placed a tax on the financial sector to offer a significant hand up for the 64 million people forced into poverty by the economic crisis,” said Mark Fried, Oxfam spokesperson.
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