OIC/Health: Prof.Ihsanoglu calls on OIC leaders to achieve success in their National Programs of Polio Eradication

JEDDAH, 16 Safar/Jan.22 (IINA)-The Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) appealed to the leaders of the OIC Member States for their intervention to support the success of national programs to combat polio disease. At the opening of the Third Meeting of the OIC Steering Committee on Health, which was held at the OIC General Secretariat in Jeddah from 22 to 23 January 2011, the Secretary General said that the progress made in the fight against diseases and epidemics in the Member States is still little especially in the field of polio, which is among the critical issues that Member States must address seriously.
He added that at the time 54 OIC countries out of 57 have managed to stop the spread of this disease, it has not yet been possible to stop contamination of the disease in some areas in three OIC member countries which are Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. These three countries are among the four countries in the world that have not yet been able to fully eradicate polio, in addition to ten OIC Member States out of 15 countries in the world which have reported the outbreak of this disease.
The General Secretariat is collaborating with the secretariat of the Global Initiative to eradicate polio, which is based in Geneva, in order to eliminate this disease. The OIC has also is working speedily for mobilization of high-level political for the benefit of the program on polio eradication.
The Secretary General noted that the ruling "fatwa" issued by the International Islamic Fiqh Academy at the request of the OIC had a significant impact in mobilizing the support of religious scholars, imams, village elders to encourage local communities to benefit from vaccination against polio. To achieve the goal of entirely eliminating the disease, the OIC will work to strengthen cooperation with the Global Initiative to eradicate polio with other related partners.
Ihsanoglu reiterated his appeal to OIC Member States to explore the possibility of submitting their contributions to promote the Global Initiative to eradicate polio by bridging the funding gap between the requirements of the programs of the Initiative and resources which have been pledged so far.
On the other hand, the Secretary General to called for focusing the attention as well on other epidemics and diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and confirmed that the OIC is still following up cooperation with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, in accordance with the memorandum of understanding signed between the OIC General Secretariat and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, however, the contributions of Member States in this fund do not achieve the desired objective.
In the field of maternal and child care, Ihsanoglu noted that the OIC Member States are still have a mortality rate of about 50% of maternal deaths in the world, while the population of the OIC represent only 25% of world population. There are five OIC Member States which have recorded maternal mortality rates exceeding 1000 deaths per hundred thousand live births, a percentage which one hundred times higher than the rate of 14 deaths per hundred thousand live births in most advanced countries. Similarly, 14 OIC Member States have recorded disproportionately high mortality rates of newborns out of 21 countries that recorded the highest mortality rate among newborn babies in 2008, including four OIC Members States of a total of five top countries in the list. This situation requires us to act immediately on this matter to rectify this situation, the Secretary General added.
AH/IINA

http://www.iina.me/english/news.php?go=fullnews&newsid=1306