In response to Pope Francis’ call on the Church to mobilise leadership for the construction of a healthier and more just world, the Africa Health and Economic Transformation Initiative (AHETI) was unveiled by The Jesuit Justice and Ecology Network – Africa (JENA) together with its sister organisation, the Africa Jesuit AIDS Network (AJAN) in collaboration with various other Catholic and non-faith based health and social justice networks in Africa.
Social justice in the health system refers to providing equal healthcare services for all individuals, regardless of one’s economic status, race, ethnicity, age, citizenship, disability etc.
This issue concerns us because we have witnessed that health care quality and access in Sub-Saharan Africa remains the worst in the world, with few countries able to spend the $34 to $40 a year per person that the World Health Organization considers the minimum for primary health care. Furthermore, despite widespread poverty, an astonishing 50 percent of the region’s health expenditure is financed by out-of-pocket payments from individuals.
With this scenario at play, came Covid 19 pandemic that pushed African families further into poverty due to economic effects of lockdowns and lack of access to vaccines. Yet, in another part of the same world, richer countries developed their own vaccines for Covid 19 and engaged in a scramble for a share of the vaccines leaving out Africa. We recall the words of Pope Francis where he said, “In this world, that you love more than we do, we have gone ahead at breakneck speed, feeling powerful and able to do anything. Greedy for profit, we let ourselves get caught up in things, and lured away by haste.” Pope Francis was referring to one of the most significant obstacles to broader vaccine distribution; the intellectual property rights. Under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, monopoly rights are granted to the pharmaceutical companies who developed them. This means that other companies who can produce the same vaccines are not permitted to do so.
A large group of low-income countries, led by South Africa and India, asked WTO to grant an emergency waiver, which would allow pharmaceutical companies to produce generic versions of these vaccines during the pandemic, making them much more widely available. The United States blocked this waiver until an announcement from President Biden; a reversal supported by Catholic advocates, as well as Pope Francis, who said, “A variant of this virus is closed nationalism, which prevents, for example, an internationalism of vaccines. Another variant is when we put the laws of the market or intellectual property over the laws of love and the health of humanity.” Pope Francis has repeatedly affirmed that vaccines must be made available and accessible to all, “especially the most vulnerable and needy of all regions of the planet.”
The Campaign
You may all recall that the Jesuit partners in Africa wrote to President Biden and other world leaders, stating that the opposition to the waiver “is contributing to the deepening global crises of inequality.” The Jesuits’ Social Justice and Ecology Secretariat (SJES) also released a statement strongly calling for justice in the global allocation of COVID-19 vaccines. “The Society of Jesus is committed to engaging in advocacy at the local, national, and international levels with like-minded organisations to ensure that all individuals, no matter where they live, have access to the COVID-19 vaccine,” read the statement from Fr. Xavier Jeyaraj, S.J., Secretary of SJES. “Nobody will be safe from the virus until everyone is safe, underscoring the need for increased justice and solidarity in addressing this global issue.” The statement was signed by the presidents of all six Jesuit conferences worldwide.
Today, we appreciate that those collaborative efforts bore fruits. AHETI is a contInuationof that work based on an approach that seeks to address the problems bedeviling Africa’s healthcare from their very root. Learn more about AHETI’s programs by visiting our website. Join the initiative today!
Working collaboratively with communities whose voices and life-ways have been marginalised and who may experience an intersection of multiple forms of injustice, our member organisations are dedicated to fighting poverty and related injustices around Africa empowering marginalised voices, communities and groups, and facilitating policy innovation. Member organisations of the Network work together internationally to achieve a greater impact through collective efforts. In all JENA’s actions, the ultimate goal is to enable people to unlock their potential, exercise their rights and manage their own lives.
Working collaboratively with communities whose voices and life-ways have been marginalised and who may experience an intersection of multiple forms of injustice, our member organisations are dedicated to fighting poverty and related injustices around Africa empowering marginalised voices, communities and groups, and facilitating policy innovation. Member organisations of the Network work together internationally to achieve a greater impact through collective efforts. In all JENA’s actions, the ultimate goal is to enable people to unlock their potential, exercise their rights and manage their own lives.
Working collaboratively with communities whose voices and life-ways have been marginalised and who may experience an intersection of multiple forms of injustice, our member organisations are dedicated to fighting poverty and related injustices around Africa empowering marginalised voices, communities and groups, and facilitating policy innovation. Member organisations of the Network work together internationally to achieve a greater impact through collective efforts. In all JENA’s actions, the ultimate goal is to enable people to unlock their potential, exercise their rights and manage their own lives.
Working collaboratively with communities whose voices and life-ways have been marginalised and who may experience an intersection of multiple forms of injustice, our member organisations are dedicated to fighting poverty and related injustices around Africa empowering marginalised voices, communities and groups, and facilitating policy innovation. Member organisations of the Network work together internationally to achieve a greater impact through collective efforts. In all JENA’s actions, the ultimate goal is to enable people to unlock their potential, exercise their rights and manage their own lives.
Working collaboratively with communities whose voices and life-ways have been marginalised and who may experience an intersection of multiple forms of injustice, our member organisations are dedicated to fighting poverty and related injustices around Africa empowering marginalised voices, communities and groups, and facilitating policy innovation. Member organisations of the Network work together internationally to achieve a greater impact through collective efforts. In all JENA’s actions, the ultimate goal is to enable people to unlock their potential, exercise their rights and manage their own lives.