Health in Mali
Mali, one of the world's poorest nations, is greatly affected by poverty, malnutrition, epidemics, and inadequate hygiene and sanitation.
[3] The 2012 conflict in northern Mali exacerbated difficulties in delivering health services to refugees living in the north.
[5] A catastrophic harvest in 2023 together with escalations in armed conflict have exacerbated food insecurity in Northern and Central Mali.
[6] 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.
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).
In southern Mali, which is more peaceful, MSF has worked to improve hospital bed numbers and malaria vaccinations.
[25] Fees also resulted in decreased services in utility and reduced women's health care in various areas such as decision making.
[22][26] 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.
[22] Recently, there has been several corporations that have developed in order to attempt to improve Mali's economic and health systems.
[27] There are also signs that pharmaceutical policies are lacking in Mali, which contributes to the uneven medical drug distribution among Malian populations.
[29] Unsafe water drinking and poor sanitation causes over 4,000 children under age 5 to die per year from diarrhea.
[29] WaterAid has actively been working in Mali to improve sanitation policies and drinking resources for Malians.
[30] Hydrogeological research under the Peace Corps has shown that local women are the most reliable sources of information regarding water control.
[36] Some of the most common food or waterborne diseases include diarrhea (bacterial and protozoal), hepatitis A, and typhoid fever, all of which pose serious threats to the communities.
[38] The entire population of Mali is at risk for malaria, although transmission varies across the country's five geo-climatic zones.
Research has shown that much of Mali's parents with a child afflicted with epilepsy had high levels of misconceptions of the disease.
[46] Polio is a deadly virus that could cause paralysis or even kill, which made the re-emergence of polio virus in Mali a huge threat; in response, the Ministry of Health of Mali and WHO (World Health Organization) has implemented an emergency response to attempt to stop the beginning of an epidemic.
The Country Programme has brought food to school and governmental systems to both encourage education and eliminate hunger.
Mali's children especially are susceptible not only to malaria but also other diseases and parasites, which prompts their immune systems to generate an unusually high number of responses and mechanisms for defense.
Research has also shown that monetary support with community-led total sanitation could be the future pathway for Mali to reduce diarrhea and prevent growth faltering.
[2] The introduction of community health workers in Bamako in 2011 has led to a dramatic reduction in the number deaths of children under five, which have been reduced from 148 per thousand, among the worst in the world, to seven in 2018, about the same as the USA.
[56] Although the Malian constitution prohibits discrimination based on gender, domestic violence is common and tolerated against women.
[57] Also, even during pregnancy and times nearing childbirth, women in Mali are culturally pushed to work their normal routines, managing household jobs and taking care of the other kids.
Mali has one of the highest infant mortality rates as well, reaching a peak of 28%, which could be attributed to a lack of ultrasound examinations and tocolysis.
[28] Since 2005, Mali has adopted a free cesarean policy in which all costs associated with the surgery in the public sector are covered.
Also, a woman's social indicators, including her status and type of marriage (widowed, married, or engaged in a male polygyny), her social power regarding other members of the community, and her connections throughout different regions and a variety of people were the defining characteristics of her status of health as well.
[58] There is a severe dearth of health services in rural Mali, since even urban regions do not have adequate numbers of physicians.
[63] Although the U.N. and World Health Organization has implemented policies to stop the inhumane act of removing genital parts, the cutting is often culturally and religiously rooted in societies, making it hard to eliminate.
[63] Mali, like many other African countries, engage in female genital cutting practices, which negatively impact women's health.
[64] Female genital cutting often occurs between the ages of 4 and 8, and results in hemorrhage, shock, pain, damage to organs, urinary infections, and other serious diseases.
