Mayotte
Mayotte: a French territory in permanent health crisis
Mayotte: a French territory in permanent health crisis
Where: Mayotte (France / Comoros)
When: 2021
On 31 March 2011, 10 years ago, Mayotte became the 101st department of France. This was a major event for the island, as it gained the status it had been waiting for since the 1974 referendum and its split from the Comoros archipelago.
But, a decade later, the situation is bitter for the small island located in the northern part of the Mozambique Channel in the Indian Ocean. Mayotte remains, geographically and in many other aspects, far removed from Metropolitan France, especially in terms of health.
In Mayotte, all the health indicators are in the red: an undersized health care offer, many obstacles to access to health care and health insurance, and the difficulty of recruiting doctors are just a few examples that complete an already gloomy situation: a life expectancy that is much lower than in Metropolitan France, an infant and maternal over-mortality, a high prevalence of diabetes and infectious and parasitic diseases, etc.
Although all the actors in the medical, social, and NGO sectors have been unanimously alerting for years about the shortcomings of the local health system and the difficulties of access to care, in view of the scale of the task and the ever-increasing demographic pressure, the health crisis is inexorably gaining ground in Mayotte.
Full story, both in French and English, available on request.