Topic: Controlling Biting-Insect Populations
Country: Benin
Delegate Name: Allie Pail
School: Williamston High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Benin position papers GLIMUN 2015 committees
Diseases transmitted by vectors, living organisms that can transmit infectious diseases from animals to humans or between humans, are very difficult to control even with modern technology. Vector-borne diseases cause more than 1 million deaths annually and malaria alone is the source of 600,000 deaths every year around the globe. This issue is mostly prevalent in underdeveloped regions and countries, especially in African nations, but diseases can be carried to more developed countries by travellers who did not take proper precautions against vector-borne diseases.
The Republic of Benin is greatly affected by vector-borne diseases; malaria, yellow fever, plague, typhus, and chikungunya are just a few of the diseases prevalent in Benin and most of Western Africa. In Benin, 28% of children under the age of five years tested positive for malaria from 2011 to 2012. The WHO also estimated that 2.4 million people, almost 1.3 of them children, needed preventive chemotherapy every year for schistosomiasis. To help prevent the spread of diseases to other nations, Benin does require a Yellow Fever Vaccination Certificate in order to travel in or out of its borders, but without help from other nations there is very little Benin can do with its own funds. To solve this the Republic of Benin, with Angola and Ethiopia, has partnered with USAID’s HFG Project to strengthen its health systems and increase its citizens’ access to healthcare, and this measure has helped Benin greatly. HFG is supporting Benin’s Ministry of Health to execute its third National Health Accounts (NHA), which will give necessary information for health system planning and budgeting. This project is also helping to sponsor community-based health insurance programs (CBHI), allowing more access to healthcare in rural areas; this insurance pools the payments of members into a collective fund (the fund is managed by the members) and covers the costs of basic health care in the community for a sick member.
The Republic of Benin would look favorably upon implementing programs similar to the third NHA in underdeveloped nations, like Benin, because of the immediate health care it would provide to people who are affected by vector-borne diseases. To make this plan affordable for all levels of income, Benin would like to create different classes of this system based on a range in income. Also, Benin suggests the creation of a league of countries in which vaccinations for all worrying diseases are required for travel, in order to provide safe travel throughout the globe. If something of this nature was implemented, travel safety from harmful diseases would improve as all people would be vaccinated and provided with information to help prevent diseases when they receive vaccinations. The Republic of Benin does not see this as an issue for each individual nation to address on its own, but rather a world issue that requires global cooperation.
