On Friday, the 20th of November, 2015, Sara Beysolow Nyanti stated that The Gambia has some of the best health system indicators in Sub-Saharan Africa. She did this at the launching of the State of the World’s Children report at Kairaba Beach Hotel, The Gambia. Madam Sara is the UNICEF Country Representative and United Nations Resident Coordinator. She made some observations about the improved state of health issues to back-up her assertion.
At this year’s report titled “Re imagining the future: Innovation for every child”, She outlined her observations on how innovation has been a principal factor in the progress made for the children since the start of The Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. She explained that through innovation, communities, entrepreneurs and young people can come up with local solutions with global impact for the children.
She talked about equity in children and how that all children should be given equal and fair chances. Many gains have been made by ensuring equity in children, She gave an example, that in The Gambia all children; boys and girls, irrespective of their financial background have access to primary school education. Now, this is very critical in redefining the entire country because basic education when made accessible to all provides the basic platform for success.
She went on to describe her observations as regards the improved state of The Gambia’s health sector. Madam Nyanti stated that immunization in the rural areas is very high and this is encouraging. She also spoke on the now experienced "cleaner environments," pointing out the fact that in The Gambia only 2% of the children still openly defecate. The remaining 98% have improved sanitation in this regard. This spells out an improvement in the health sector as a whole. This is because quite a number of deadly diseases can be avoided by immunization and a clean environment will reduce the possibilities of breeding disease-causing organisms.
Irrespective of this notable observations, she acknowledged the fact that there are still some challenges in certain sectors. An instance is in the case of immunization. Over the years, a lot has gone into immunization in the rural areas and even though today, there have been commendable improvements, the immunization rate in the urban area has been brought down to 58% because of less concentration of efforts in those areas. This defeats the purpose of equity as everyone, either rural or urban dwellers should have equal and fair chances for accessing health services such as immunizations.
She pointed out that 17 of the sustainable development goals (SDG) deal with areas that directly impact the well-being and rights of children, thereby giving all development partners the opportunity to have strategic engagements in monitoring of the children’s’ progress and in responding to their needs.
Conclusively, it can be said that The Gambia is worthy of emulation. This also spells hope that indeed African countries can develop, build and maintain a long-lasting and functional health system and ensure that equity is built into every sector to guarantee that the poor and the needy are not left out.
I encourage other African countries to take the issue of equity especially as regards the health and the education of children very seriously. This helps to ensure that everyone is given a chance, moreover the children are the future of a nation, group, community or family. These are the ones who in the near future can birth the solution to today's unsolved problems and answer the world's unanswered questions.
Written By: Paul Ozioma
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