Health & Education

In the 1980s Côte d’Ivoire’s health care system was a model for the region, but population growth, waning state revenues and conflict eroded the capacity of public institutions, leading to material and facility shortages and declining health for citizens. Major killers today are largely preventive diseases, such as malaria and HIV/AIDS, demanding the establishment of national programmes to coordinate and implement efforts to fight them. Yet, after decades of eroding health budgets, the Ivoirian government has declared 2013 as the “Year of Health”, pledging to greatly increase state expenditures to modernise and expand the public health care system, inspiring hope for improvements in key indicators such as maternal and child mortality rates.