Health in Mali

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.^[1] Progress is impeded by Mali's poverty^[2] and by a lack of physicians.^[3] The 2012 conflict in northern Mali exacerbated difficulties in delivering health services to refugees living in the north.^[4] With a landlocked, agricultural-based economy, Mali is highly vulnerable to climate change.^[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. 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.^[7]