KIGALI - The Africa Public Health Alliance and 15%+ Campaign, a non-profit organization promoting health development and financing across Africa, in partnership with World Health Organization, has ranked Rwanda as the leading country in Africa to allocate a high percentage of its domestic budgets to health towards achieving MDGs and African health priorities.

The new 2010 African Health financing scorecard highlights percentage allocation of budgets and per capita investment on health against main Indicators for MDGs on Child Mortality, Maternal Mortality, HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria in African countries.

According to the scorecard, Rwanda out-competed other countries by allocating 18.8 percent of its annual budget to the health sector, followed by Botswana with 17.8 percent while Burundi was second last with 2.4percent and Somalia coming last on the continent with negative zero.

This development follows the Abuja declaration where African Heads of states and governments agreed to allocate at least 15 percent of domestic budgets to health sectors to achieve MDGs and African health priorities.

The report also indicates that 32 out of 53 African union member states invest under $20 per capita in the health sector which is less than half the WHO recommended barest minimum.

It further reveals that every year 241,000 babies die in the first month of life with Nigeria being the African country with the highest infant mortality rate.

Micky Chopa, UNICEF Chief of Health and the Global Countdown to 2015 for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, called on African leaders to apply technical and political efforts to invest in implementation and be accountable for change, especially in poorest families.

Rwanda’s success was attributed to possession of clean water, sanitation and environment, nutrition, gender equity in health; pharmaceutical capacity, better access to medicines; and higher numbers of health workers equitably distributed geographically as well as utilizing health resources more efficiently.

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