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Seychelles

Seychelles country cooperation strategy at a glance

Attachments

HEALTH SITUATION

Seychelles is the only African country now declared a high-income country having made remarkable political, social and economic progress in the recent past.
Instituting a firm social growth mechanism embedded in its constitution, Seychelles provides universal health coverage for a comprehensive health package at all levels including anti-retroviral therapy and non-communicable diseases, universal access to education at all levels and safe drinking water, good sanitation and housing. High political commitment for social services including health enabled the country to achieve most of the MDGs.

Notwithstanding the country’s impressive health achievements, emerging and reemerging issues remain a challenge. Whilst responding to health, climate change, environmental and other threats faced by other small island developing states, Seychelles is additionally burdened by increasing non-communicable diseases due to prevailing risk factors such as poor diet, physical inactivity, substance abuse and increasing alcohol consumption. As a result, the country’s health expenditure continuous to balloon raising doubts concerning sustainability of the tax-based health financing in the medium term.

HEALTH POLICIES AND SYSTEMS

Comprehensive national health policy and national health strategy have been elaborated within the context of Sustainable Development Strategy. Seychelles is resolutely committed towards attainment of health SDGs through consolidation of MDGs gains, enhanced focus on patient-centred quality health services, preventive and promotive services for NCDs, innovative interventions to address HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C, whilst strengthening health security using an all hazard approach.

In order to achieve the aforementioned, Seychelles recognises the need to improve health workforce productivity and sustainability including availability of specialised health workers. An identified high priority is improvement of the health information system for evidence-based policy decision-making and incremental shift to a resultsbased management approach. Redesigned service delivery system focuses on person centeredness with an emphasis on community involvement in health actions through the “my health, my responsibility” campaign. Better and more efficient health financing modalities are being explored to improve efficiency of use of available resources and to introduce innovation for sustainability.