Mali, one of the world's poorest nations, is greatly affected by poverty, malnutrition, epidemics, and inadequate hygiene and sanitation. Mali's health and development indicators rank among the worst in the world, with little improvement over the last 20 years. Progress is impeded by Mali's poverty and by a lack of physicians. The 2012 conflict in northern Mali exacerbated difficulties in delivering health services to refugees living in the north.
A new measure of expected human capital calculated for 195 countries from 1990 to 2016 and defined for each birth cohort as the expected years lived from age 20 to 64 years and adjusted for educational attainment, learning or education quality, and functional health status was published by The Lancet in September 2018. Mali had the fifth lowest level of expected human capital countries with 3 health, education, and learning-adjusted expected years lived between age 20 and 64 years. This was a notable improvement over 1990 when its score was 0, the lowest of all.
Health infrastructure
Although Mali has its own health care, with a governmental constitution that advocates countrywide health, Mali is heavily dependent upon international development organizations and foreign missionary groups for much of its health care. In 2015, the health expenditure by the government was only 5.8% of GDP.
Hospitals
Medical facilities in Mali are very limited, especially outside of Bamako, and medicines are in short supply. In 2019, there were 1,478 medical facilities in Maili, including 18 government and university hospitals. The additional medical facilities included polyclinics, clinics, and health centers. The other facilities are small health centers and posts. The table below lists the hospitals, region, type, ownership, and coordinates:
Physician availability
There are three major public hospitals in the greater Bamako region. However, Mali still lacks a great number of physicians, as there are only .08 physicians per 10 000 citizens. In 2009, there were only 729 physicians in the entire country of more than 10 million people.
Doctors Without Borders
In Northern Mali, there are very little areas in which civilians could ask for medical assistance. Health authorities have proven to be unable to manage epidemics within the populations in northern Mali, and this gap has been filled by the Doctors Without Borders association, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Since the coming of the MSF, more than 40,000 children have been protected from malaria and improved regional hospitals. The struggle still remains in the fact that over 40% of people in some regions must walk 9 miles to the nearest health clinic. Much of northern Mali has been afflicted with conflict, resulting in many refugees.
In southern Mali, which is more peaceful, MSF has worked to improve hospital bed numbers and malaria vaccinations.
Governmental actions
In 2009 the government of Mali aided by the Chinese government began construction of a fourth in Missabougou quarter, Bamako, to be named "Hôpital du Mali". However, the government as invested minimally into health (2.9%), rendering most major projects unable to be carried out. Organizations like the Health Policy Project (HPP) have been pushing for more government resources for health. Furthermore, a study by the Infection Control Hospital Epidemiology (ICHE) has determined that help from the World Health Organization in the sanitation and health of Malians was feasible and effective.
Health policy systems
Many African countries have been advocating the implementation of user fees regarding health care within the countries, which would charge citizens based on the health care they received. There has been significant studies to show that such charging results in complicated health and social problems that could have severe consequences in gender equality, household powers, social status, and poverty. Fees also resulted in decreased services in utility and reduced women's health care in various areas such as decision making.
Health care
Although Mali's constitution guarantees the right to proper health, only around 2.9% of the nation's GDP is invested into health care, resulting in the incidence of many disease being too high. Much of what little health care Mali has is focused on to Mali's capitol, Bamako, where around 4000 healthcare workers strive to keep 1.8 million people in good health. The rest of the country has less than 3500 healthcare workers in total, meaning that people living in rural areas of Mali receive minimal health care.