Public health in Niger suffers from a chronic lack of resources and a small number of health providers relative to population. Some medicines are in short supply or unavailable.
Health infrastructure
There are government hospitals in Niamey, Maradi, Tahoua, Zinder and other large cities, with smaller medical clinics in most towns. Medical facilities are limited in both supplies and staff, with a small governmenthealthcare system supplemented by private, charitable, religious, and Non-government organisation operated clinics and public health programs. Government hospitals, as well as public health programmes, fall under the control of the Nigerian Ministry of Health. A number of private for profit clinics operate in Niamey and other cities. The total expenditure on health per capita in 2005 was Intl $25. There were 377 physicians in Niger in 2004, a ratio of 0.03 per 10,000 population. In 2003, 89.2 percent of individual expenditures on healthcare were "out-of-pocket".
Health status
Malaria
remains a major public health issue and is endemic throughout the country. As the primary cause of illness in Niger, malaria accounts for 28 percent of all illness and 50 percent of all recorded deaths. Children under five years of age account for about 62 percent of the burden of disease and 75 percent of malaria-related mortality. In 2015, Niger instituted a National Health Policy aimed at improving the equity of services and the quality of care by increasing access to health services for vulnerable people such as women, children, disabled people, and rural populations and exempted mothers and children under five years of age from health user fees. The NMCP has focused its effort for reducing the burden of malaria morbidity and mortality through systematic use of diagnostic tools for suspected malaria cases and effective use of antimalarial medicines for confirmed cases. Niger’s malaria program also supports prevention strategies, such as the prevention of malaria in pregnancy, mass drug distribution for seasonal malaria prevention, and vector control interventions including promoting consistent use of long lasting insecticide treated nets.
Polio
, as recently as 2000 considered endemic in places, exists as a small number of cases annually, mostly imported from northern Nigeria which in 2005 was the home of around 40 percent of the world's confirmed cases.
Meningitis
Niger is within a belt of sub-Saharan Africa susceptible to seasonal outbreaks of Neisseria meningitidis: a meningococcal bacterial meningitis. These outbreaks tend to occur around the end of the "cold" season in February to the beginning of the rainy season in May. The 2009 West African meningitis outbreak resulted in several thousand infections and more than one hundred deaths.
Measles
outbreaks still occur in Niger, in part due to the low vaccination rate and in part due to seasonal migration of rural populations. Sporadic outbreaks in Nigerien communities were found to have occurred beginning at the end of the rainy season, when many rural populations begin seasonal migration pattern, with traveling children often missing their vital second immunization booster against the disease.
HIV/AIDS
2008 estimates ranged from 44,000 to 85,000 people living with HIV in a nation of around 14 million, with an adult prevalence rate of between 0.6% and 1.1%. Adults aged 15 and up living with HIV were estimated to range from 42,000 to 81,000, with women of this age range making up about a third. Estimates of children living with HIV were between 2,500 and 4,200. Total deaths were estimated to be between 3,000 to 5,600 per year. Aids orphans were estimated at between 18,000 and 39,000.
Maternal and child healthcare
The 2010 maternal mortality rate per 100,000 births for Niger is 820. This is compared with 600.7 in 2008 and 890.1 in 1990. The under 5 mortality rate, per 1,000 births is 167 and the neonatal mortality as a percentage of under 5's mortality is 22. In Niger the number of midwives per 1,000 live births is 1 and the lifetime risk of death for pregnant women is 1 in 16.
