Petaling Jaya - Muslim countries need to work together to improve the quality of their public health which is in a sorry state.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, in making this call yesterday, said efforts towards capacity building such as this was important as the Organisation of Islamic Conference strove to move forward.
He said although several initiatives were underway towards improving public health in Muslim countries, such as the Islamic Development Bank`s push for a programme of self-reliance in vaccine production, co-operation needed to be intensified to speed up progress by several notches.
Malaysia on its part, he added, had set up the National Institute for Natural Products, Vaccines and Biologicals for research in vaccine production, especially halal vaccines.
"It is a tragedy, not only because the outlook is bleak, it is a tragedy because there is so much that we can do to prevent needless death and suffering," said Abdullah in his keynote address yesterday at the Kuala Lumpur-OIC Health Ministerial Conference 2007.
The inaugural conference, a Malaysian initiative, is expected to become a permanent track under the OIC banner.
Citing an example, the prime minister said vaccination had long eradicated killer diseases such as polio in Western countries, but many Muslim nations continued to be exposed to them.
He said it was an under-appreciated fact that infants and children in Islamic countries faced the highest risk of catching infectious diseases.
Some Muslim countries in Africa and central Asia suffer infant mortality rates exceeding 100 per 1,000 live births.
"Very few Islamic countries register infant mortality rates lower than 10 per 1,000 live births. These are countries such as Brunei, Bahrain and Malaysia," Abdullah said.
He said OIC member nations also had among the highest mortality rates for children under the age of five and Islamic nations made up a majority of those with under-five mortality rates exceeding 200 deaths per 1,000.
Many of these children suffer diseases, such as measles, malaria and respiratory infections, which can largely be averted.
Abdullah said the situation was compounded by a funding gap in immunisation — a glaring deficit in the production of vaccines among OIC member countries and concerns over their acceptability and quality.
"We have much to do as many of the world`s Muslims live in conditions that expose them to the most virulent, yet most preventable, infections."
Meanwhile, OIC secretary-general Professor Dr Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, in his welcoming speech, said it was sad that in many countries worldwide, especially member countries of the OIC, there were outbreaks of pandemic diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, polio, HIV/AIDS and avian flu.
"It`s sad that these outbreaks are seen in developing countries and are mainly affecting children and women," he said.
According to the World Health Organisation, he said, each year 300 to 500 million cases of malaria occur around the world and more than one million people, in particular the young, die of it.
As for polio, he said three out of four affected countries were members of the OIC.
"The latest outbreak of avian flu is also posing a serious threat to OIC member states," said Dr Ikmeleddin.
He pointed out that the shortage of affordable drugs, vaccines, skilled manpower and adequate infrastructure were the main reasons for the failure to effectively tackle health issues in the OIC countries.
"It has also been observed that outbreaks of diseases are generally closely related to the spread of poverty," he said.
Dr Ikmeleddin hoped the conference would review and discuss past interventions, realign their work and propose strategies at national, regional and international levels to combat pandemic diseases.
Source: http://www.nst.com.my (15 Juni 2007)