Angola

Providing health care

After 30 years of civil war, Angola is one of the worst places in the world to be a child. Almost 30% of children under the age of 5 die each year. Less than half of all children go to school. Only 34% of families have access to safe water and only 44% have proper sanitation facilities. Nearly 2 million people are internally displaced - half of whom are children.

In recent years, many people have returned to rural villages to resettle and rebuild their lives. This presents huge challenges for under-funded public health services, which are recovering too from decades of conflict. Thousands of children and their families do not have access to public health care and cannot afford to pay for private care. HIV/AIDS is a growing threat, with low levels of awareness about the disease and a lack of reproductive health services.

Save the Children is providing medicine and health equipment to health facilities in Huambo Province, an area targeted by Save the Children because of its high number of internally displaced people.

We're also training doctors, nurses and midwives whose jobs have been neglected over the last 27 years, improving their clinical, diagnosis and treatment skills. The training also focuses on helping malnourished children and providing a youth-friendly reproductive health service. We're also working with the Ministry of Health to improve its ability to support staff and health professionals working in Huambo.