Organisation of Islamic Cooperation
The Collective Voice of The Muslim World
Date: 22/01/2011
The Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, has appealed to leaders of OIC Member States to intervene and lend support to ensure success of the national polio eradication programmes. At the inauguration of the third meeting of the Steering Committee on Health held at the OIC General Secretariat in Jeddah from 22 – 23 January 2011, the Secretary General noted that the progress recorded in combating diseases and epidemics in the OIC Member States remained slow and varied, especially with regard to polio, which is one of the critical issues that Member States must tackle seriously.
He said that while fifty-four out fifty-seven OIC Member States have been able to stop polio outbreak, the spread of the disease is yet to be arrested in some regions of three Member States, namely Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. These countries are among the four in the world that are yet to eradicate polio. Ten OIC Member States are among fifteen countries in the world that have reported a return of this disease.
The OIC General Secretariat is cooperating with the Geneva-based Secretariat of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative to overcome this disease. The OIC is also stepping up its advocacy and mobilization of high level political support for the polio eradication programmes.
The Secretary General hinted that the religious edict issued by the International Islamic Fiqh Academy at the behest of the OIC went a long way in mobilizing the support of religious scholars to encourage local communities to vaccinate their children. To achieve the desired objective of outright eradication of this disease, the OIC will strengthen its cooperation with the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and other partners concerned.
Ihsanoglu renewed his appeal to OIC Member States to explore the possibility of extending their contributions to boost the Global Initiative by filling the existing financial gaps between the requirements of the Initiative’s programmes and the resources so far pledged.
On another hand the Secretary General urged that attention should be focused on other epidemics and diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. He assured that the OIC continues to follow up on the cooperation with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, in pursuance of the signed Memorandum of Understanding between the OIC General Secretariat and the Fund, noting however that Member States contributions to the Fund have not achieved the desired objective.
Concerning maternal and child care, Ihsanoglu unveiled the fact that OIC Member States still had about 50% maternal mortality rate in the world at a time when the population of Member States is just 52% of the global total. There are 5 countries in the OIC Member States where recorded maternal mortality rate was close to or exceeded 1000 deaths in every 100,000 cases of child birth, a rate that is 100 times more that 14 deaths in every 100,000 cases in the advanced countries. Similarly, OIC Member States recorded a disproportionately high level of child mortality in 14 countries out a total of 21 with the highest rates of child mortality in 2008, with four Member States in the group of the top five. This situation calls for immediate action in order to change the trend.
