Abstract
Events in northern Mali during 2012 have led to a triple human tragedy: over 1 million people remaining in the occupied zone have been cut off from contact with the national healthcare system for 8 months; almost 200,000 people have fled the insecurity of their home area to the free zone; over 200,000 people have had to take refuge in neighboring countries (Niger, Burkina, Mauritania and Algeria). In addition, the collapse of the country's economic situation, which followed the March 2012 coup d'état, led the state to cut its budget by a third, depriving all public health structures of almost their entire operating budget.
In response to this situation, humanitarian NGOs and the United Nations immediately mobilized to bring relief to suffering populations. While their interventions must be supported and even amplified to cope with the grave health situation in the two zones of the country, the two current challenges facing Mali are not only to compensate for the health effects of the crisis, but also to minimize the negative consequences that the conduct of humanitarian actions could have on the organization and general functioning of the healthcare system. Indeed, it is on the latter that the resumption of the various programs will depend once peace has returned to Mali.
