Government Should Follow Generous Public's Lead on Overseas Aid

A team headed by Anthony Zwi, Professor and Head of the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales, and including Natalie Grove, Researcher, and Maria-Theresa Ho, Senior Lecturer, say governance, law and justice were big ticket items in the 2005-06 Australian federal and aid budgets, reflecting the increasing focus on national security in Australia and elsewhere.

Professor Zwi says that in 2005-06 Australia is devoting only 12 per cent of official development assistance to health, substantially less than countries such as the UK. But Professor Zwi and his colleagues argue that basic health services should attract ongoing support and attention.

Although official development assistance has been creeping up over the past five years, Australia's assistance is currently well below the average level of aid committed by OECD nations.

Within the current aid envelope, governance and security are the main areas that have attracted additional funds in recent years.

Australia's official development assistance is also increasingly directed to near neighbours with forty two per cent of ODA allocated to just three countries - Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

Three per cent goes to Africa where poverty and conflict, as evidenced in Niger and Sudan, cut deepest.

"Assistance to those in greatest need remains crucial if the benefits of greater equity, stability and control of infectious diseases are to be achieved," say the authors.

The authors ask whether the government will follow the lead of a generous public, outlining the Australian community's response to the 2004 earthquake and tsunami.

"We need to tap into this public solidarity and ensure that official development assistance, despite its limitations, obtains more resources and attention.

"Increasing commitment to health and education will reinforce governance and security, but this is not why they should be supported.

"Health and education should attract funds because we care about other people, because we have a commitment to promoting human security in the region, and because we find it unacceptable that women die in childbirth because of lack of health services.

"Health and education should attract funds because preventable diseases kill so many children before the age of five, and that infectious and non-communicable diseases are decimating economies.

"Basic services require support, which cannot be provided within the existing aid envelope.

"The Australian Government White Paper on aid, currently being drafted and due in early 2006, is an opportunity to reinforce commitments to dramatically increase ODA and should place health firmly back on the agenda.

"The Australian public has demonstrated a willingness to contribute directly. Can we mobilise a matching political commitment?"

The Medical Journal of Australia is a publication of the Australian Medical Association.