Our challenges

There are significant global health challenges that require concerted action from us.

Infant and maternal mortality:

Prevalence rates of maternal and infant mortality and morbidity (illness and disability) remain very high in many Commonwealth Sub-Saharan African countries and some Commonwealth countries in Asia and South Pacific. (The top 10 highest prevalence rates (maternal deaths per 100,000) are Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Malawi, Cameroon, Lesotho, Tanzania, Zambia, Gambia, Bangladesh and Kenya (Source: ‘Maternal mortality in 2005’)

Financial and human resources:

While effective interventions are known to address immunization or to reduce maternal mortality, or to reduce the risk of HIV infection, many health systems lack the financial and human resources required for sustained delivery or high quality services, particularly services in or for poor communities.

Growing HIV prevalence:

HIV prevalence among women continues to grow and the stigma surrounding AIDS limits the implementation of effective interventions.

Lifestyles and diets:

With lifestyle and dietary changes, countries in the Caribbean and Pacific that successfully reduced the incidence of communicable diseases (diseases passed on from one person to another) and countries in Asia that continue to have a simultaneous high burden of communicable diseases are seeing rapidly increasing morbidity and mortality associated with diabetes, hypertension and cancer. This is partly due to changing lifestyles and diets. For example, an increase in available transport and a more sedentary lifestyle means less physical activity; an increase in availability of tinned or fatty foods coupled with less availability of fresh produce means a poor diet; and an increase in the accessibility of cigarettes means an increase in smoking-related diseases.

Demand for health workers:

Globally, a changing epidemiological (click here for definition) and demographic profile has increased the demand for health workers. This increasing global demand has been a key factor in causing health worker, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, as health workers are migrating to seek opportunities abroad.