Millennium Development Goals

DEBT as a major obstacle to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015

Debt and HIV/AIDS: A Deadly Combination!

To highlight the relationship between debt, health, and HIV/AIDS on the African continent, Africa Action has compiled a table comparing debt service expenditure and spending on health. The table below puts these issues in perspective and highlights the following:

Between 1970 and 2003, African countries received about $540 billion in loans and paid back $580 billion in debt service, yet the continent is still saddled with a crippling $330 billion in external debt.

This burden of debt diverts money directly from spending on health care and other important needs. In 2003, African countries paid over $25 billion in debt service fees, even as 2.3 million Africans lost their lives to AIDS. In Angola, about 240,000 people live with HIV/AIDS and yet that country spent $106 per capita on foreign debt payments and only $38 per capita on health.

Many of Africa’s most impoverished countries spend more per capita on debt service than on health care. For every dollar spent on health care in 2002, the Democratic Republic of Congo spent more than four dollars on debt service – this in a country where 1.1 million people are living with HIV/AIDS.
Even if the Group of 8 (G-8) proposal to cancel the debts of 14 African countries were immediately implemented, it would have no effect on the majority of African countries, who will still spend more on debt service than on vital social services.

For more www.africaaction.org/newsroom

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