African leaders attending the 15th African Union (AU) Summit in Kampala, have agreed to reinforce the AU mission in Somalia with additional 2,000 troops, to put the growing militancy in that country under check.
They also approved calls to reinforce the budget of AU mission in Somalia and its equipment.
The issue of Somalia, overshadowed the three-day summit, originally planned to discuss maternal, infant and child health, in the wake of two separate bomb attacks by the Somali al-Shabab rebels that claimed 76 lives two weeks ahead of the Summit.
The declaration made before the Summit went into a closed-door session, would allow the troops, by the rules of engagement, to open fire first if they faced imminent attack.
Uganda and Burundi contributed largely to the 6,000 soldiers currently deployed in Somalia, to bring the rebel activities of the al-Shabaab under control.
Suicide bombers linked to al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda launched what could be described as retaliatory attacks on Ugandan party makers in Kampala during the just-ended World Cup Tournament.
President John Evans Atta Mills, together with other African Leaders minced no words in condemning the attacks in a preface to their
contributions on the Summit under the theme: "Maternal, Infant and Child Health and
Development in Africa".
The leaders' declaration included a recommitment to meet the 2001 pledge in Abuja, Nigeria, to devote 15 per cent of the national spending to health.
Only three African countries met that target by 2007, they are Rwanda, Botswana and Djibouti.
The declaration included a pledge to strengthen health systems, to provide
comprehensive, integrated, maternal and child health care services with a recognition that countries must act to address health worker shortages.
The management of Save the Children, a child centred NGO estimated a shortage of 800,000 health workers across the continent.
The leaders in that context pledged to train more health workers to mitigate the human resource crisis in the health sector.
Other positive measures the leaders resolved to work on are a call for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to include a new window for funding maternal and child health, and a commitment to establish an African Union task force on maternal, new born and child health that would monitor and track the progress on meeting agreed targets.
From: Benjamin Mensah, GNA Special Correspondent, Kampala, Uganda