Insecurity, major hindrance to children’s access to healthcare -ECOWAS laments

The Director, Political Affairs, of Economic Community of West African States -ECOWAS, Dr. Remi Ajibewa has lamented that children in the region still lack access to health services, mainly due to insecurity and other forms of conflict.

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He raised the concern at an event to commemorate the 2022 ECOWAS Human Rights Day, organised in collaboration with Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD-West Africa) in Abuja, yesterday.

Speaking on the theme of the event, ‘Guaranteeing Child Rights to Health for an Inclusive Community Development’, Ajibewa said poor funding of the health sector by governments is an issue of great concern.

Ajibewa said children’s rights issues, such as use of child soldiers, trafficking, prostitution, forced labour and ritual killings, hardly receive proper attention in the region.

He said the mirage of not attending to enforcement of child rights has often led to situations where children are forced to suffer a great deal of health concerns and consequential loss of their life.

“There are still very limited healthcare and sanitation services, basic resources such as clean water and soap, and limited common knowledge about how to prevent and treat diseases. Infection spreads rapidly among malnourished people with low resistance to disease in crowded slums,” he said.

Country Director, Amnesty International Nigeria, Mrs. Ossai Ojigbo, lamented that many West African countries have not made ample commitments to international and regional treaties, protocols and conventions they signed up to.

These treaties, according to her, include the UN Convention on Rights of the Child, African Charter on Rights and Welfare of the Child, and ECOWAS Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance.

She said: “These West African countries are also part of the Abuja Declaration, which said at least 10 per cent of a country’s health budget should be allocated to health. Many countries on this continent have not met that minimum allocation.

“What this means is that our health services continue to be based on private provision of services, which is also a violation of our Right to Health.”

Bukky/Guardian