President Yoweri Museveni has urged all governments within the East African Community (EAC) and partners to re-affirm their commitment to strengthen infrastructure and health sectors so as to accelerate attainment of overall socio-economic transformation for the peoples of East Africa.
While opening the EAC Heads of State Summit and Joint Retreat at Speke Resort in Munyonyo, President Museveni said that there is need for the region to come up with better mechanisms to address the health threats that constantly attack the region.
Museveni said that with the current array of technologies, there is no reason why East Africans can not eliminate some of the health challenges like Malaria, TB, HIV and Prevention of Mertanal and Child Death.
The President noted that it is time for the Community to refocus its efforts to address these challenges through increased investment in production, development of human resources towards the universal coverage of the essential health of East Africans.
“As we commit ourselves as leaders to champion the health agenda, I call upon investors and development partners to consider investments especially in the specialized health care due to the growing middle class,” Museveni said.
He noted that in addition to ensuring healthy lives, the health sector is expected to contribute more significantly to the creation of new jobs and manufacturing of medicines by setting up factories.
“The health sector should be a foreign exchange earner to the region. Some years ago, I advised Ugandans that since you have achieved high levels of AIDS projections, why don’t you at least economically benefit from the problem?And we chose to build a pharmaceutical industry which is now earning USD 65 million a year”.
Museveni argued that the health problems should as well be looked at as opportunities that can foster economic growth.
“If we have the disease then let us get money out of it so that we suffer once,” he told the delegates.
Hundreds of delegates from the six countries that make up the East African Community, including heads of state are attending the two-day summit. Presidents in attendance include Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta, South Sudan’s Salvar Kiir and Tanzania’s John Pombe Magufuli.
The summit is themed on “Deepening and widening regional integration through infrastructure and health sector development in the EAC partner states’’.
It indends to accelerate the attainment of the objectives of the EAC development strategy, African Union agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals in the infrastructure and health sectors in the EAC.