Uganda has been registered as the only country in the East African region that is on track to achieving the fourth Millennium Development Goal (MDG 4) of reducing the under-five child mortality rate by two-thirds by the year 2015.

According to information from the World Health Organisation during the 56th Regional Committee in Kigali, the other EAC states of Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi are unlikely to achieve it unless more effort is added.  

WHO said data showed that none of the five East African Community states including its neighbours such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia was on track to achieve MDG 4.

WHO executive director Dr Margaret Chan told delegates that HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria continue to be a major public health problem with far reaching consequences for the East African region.

The meeting which was addressed by President Paul Kagame of Rwanda was convened by the WHO Regional Committee for Africa.

President Kagame urged delegates to concentrate on solutions that will promote health and reflect deeply on Africa’s social scene especially the state of health systems which, “any unbiased observer would readily describe as ‘gravely ill’— a not so new verdict.”

According to information availed at the meeting Uganda was the only country (together with Gambia, Madagascar and Djibouti) that recorded decline of about 40 per cent in under-five mortality rates.

According to WHO regional director Dr Luis Gomes Sambo, under-five mortality rates in the south and east African region dropped from 185 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 157 per 1,000 in 2006 far from the fourth Millennium Development Goal (MDG 4) target of a two-thirds reduction by 2015.

The deaths are attributed to poverty that is responsible for increasing malnutrition and declining conditions of hygiene thus reducing immune system defences and causing disease that could have been prevented by immunisation.

Parallel WHO research findings indicate that measles is still the leading cause of death of children in the region, followed by Aids, tuberculosis and malaria.

According to a WHO sub-regional report, though vaccination coverage against measles has improved in the region, it is not enough to effectively ensure children’s survival.

The report also said that in 2008, sub-Saharan Africa carried the highest burden of HIV infections and HIV/Aids related mortality in the world.

“Scaling up effective malaria control interventions such as the use of insecticide-treated nets, artemisinin-based combination therapies and intermittent preventive therapy has not reached desirable levels,” the report adds.

The report also adds that the burden of chronic non-communicable diseases is growing in the region while health systems are inadequately prepared to provide the services required for prevention disease management.