Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Dr Seif Rashid
As Tanzania launches the new global Sustainable Development Goals today in Dar es Salaam, Minister of Health and Social Welfare maintains that, despite other failures in his ministry, Tanzania has achieved a lot in reducing maternal, newborn and child deaths.
He said Tanzania is one of the four countries in Sub Saharan countries that have achieved remarkable success in reducing mother and infant mortality rates.
“The infant mortality rate is 54 deaths per 1000 this moment, a vast improvement from the 99 deaths per 1000 in 1999,” he said.
The minister said he is sure that by 2030 the country can reduce maternal, newborn, child deaths by over 80 per cent
He pointed out factors like insufficient facilities and staff as drawbacks to achieving more: “but the government is prepared to increase operational units in hospitals to curb the crisis,” he said.
Reached for comments, residents of Dar es Salaam share different views, Raphael Geofrey, a Kinondoni resident said the millennium development goals have not being achieved: “specifically goal number one, eradicating extreme poverty and hunger.”
“In Tanzania, recent studies show that poverty level is still high as more than 12million people still live below the extreme poverty line,” he said.
Farhan Omary cited that: “despite the fact that the country’s economy has recorded a 7 per cent annual growth it does not reflect living status of about 60 per cent of Tanzanians that still survive on under one dollar a day,” he said.
According to him, the major cause for failure is poor development policies that fail to identify key priority areas for economic development to accelerate production in major economic sectors.
“The government has failed to develop key production sectors which could create employment opportunities in both urban and rural areas to help citizen earn their daily capital,” he said.
On her part, Luisa James, also of Kinondoni seconded the view that the government has failed to meet the MDGs and in her view, it has failed to improve the education system in the country.
“The government has only being increasing the number of buildings and not equipment and teachers something which undermines the country’s education development,” she said.
“Also, the number of buildings is not proportional to the number of teachers, so we still have long way to go,” she concluded.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
