Just com­ing off of a three decade long civil war, Angola has a lot of work to do to improve life in the coun­try. Once ranked the worst for child well being in the world, there has been a lit­tle improve­ment since the war ended in 2002.

From the IPS, reporter Louise Red­vers fills us in on the slow progress to restore ser­vices in Angola.

Angola is ranked 16th in the world for child mor­tal­ity. Accord­ing to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), one in six chil­dren here die before they reach their fifth birth­day — the main causes of death being malaria, res­pi­ra­tory infec­tions, diar­rhoea and other infections.

The rank­ing, although dire, is at least some improve­ment from the 2001 count of one in four — which had Angola ranked worst in the world — but there is still some way to go if the coun­try is to reach the 2015 Mil­len­nium Devel­op­ment Goal (MDG) of reduc­ing child mor­tal­ity by two thirds.

Angola’s high child mor­tal­ity rates are a direct hang­over from the country’s three-decade-long civil war, which ended in 2002.

The few health ser­vices which existed for Angolans before they gained inde­pen­dence from Por­tu­gal in 1975 when the con­flict began were soon dec­i­mated, and despite its enor­mous oil and dia­mond wealth, the coun­try was wracked by poverty.

Mil­lions fled the coun­try­side, where land­mines ren­dered agri­cul­tural land use­less, and moved to Luanda, now home to an esti­mated seven mil­lion peo­ple. The major­ity lives in shan­ty­towns, known in Angola as musse­ques, with lit­tle access to run­ning water or sanitation.

Since the end of the war, gov­ern­ment has under­gone a pro­gramme of national recon­struc­tion, lit­er­ally rebuild­ing or build­ing from scratch all pub­lic services.

In addi­tion to build­ing new hos­pi­tals and clin­ics, there has been a focus on train­ing com­mu­nity health work­ers to pro­mote basic house­hold health, such as hand-washing, water treat­ment and sleep­ing under a mos­quito net.

New sta­tis­tics from UNICEF, Angola’s Min­istry of Health and the World Bank are due to be pub­lished jointly later this year and will be the lit­mus test to see if gov­ern­ment spend­ing has been mak­ing a difference.

It will also help gov­ern­ment hone in on the worst prob­lem areas and tar­get its spending.

Koen Vanormelin­gen, UNICEF rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Angola, believes there has been tremen­dous progress: “The gov­ern­ment is really com­mit­ted, and it is putting its money where its mouth is. There is of course a time laps between the moment inter­ven­tions are imple­mented and when you see the results in terms of lower mortality.”

“We are strong believ­ers that Angola will be able to meet their MDGs for reduc­ing child mor­tal­ity,” he said optimistically.

The every­day real­ity of poverty in Angola’s musse­ques, where chil­dren play among piles of lit­ter and stag­nant water breeds dis­eases, seems a long way off Vanormelingen’s colour­ful sta­tis­ti­cal bul­letins, however.

Acknowl­edg­ing this, he said: “There is so much to be done at the same time that it gives the impres­sion of anar­chy and inef­fi­cien­cies, but I do believe there is a sense of strat­egy and direction.”

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