Morocco's health policy expounded at World Health Organization

Morocco's health minister, Abdelouahed El Fassi, traced Tuesday the broadlines of the kingdom's sanitary strategy seeking to improve medical coverage and protect citizens against major killer and sexually transmissible diseases.

Addressing the ongoing 52nd assembly of the World Health Organization, which opened works Monday in Geneva, the Moroccan minister said the strategy aims to improve the citizens' health conditions through the setting up of an insurance health system and through easing access to basic medical care to the lower social layers.

He also affirmed that Morocco's health strategy, which takes into account the country's regionalization and decentralization policy, seeks to rationalize the sector's human and financial resources, improve the medical staff training, hospital management and medical services.

Efforts made in the kingdom in the medical sector allowed the country to eradicate polio and reduce by 4% TB cases, Abdelouahed Fassi added, affirming that his department has an ambitious program for the elimination of trachoma by year 2000, paludism (2002), bilharzia (2004) and leprosy (2020).

The Moroccan official also spoke of the strategy to reduce mothers' mortality and the struggle against AIDS and smoking.