FrontLines: First Agency Health Team Visits Libya as Sanctions Fall

SOURCE: Bob Emrey, GH/HIDN

TRIPOLI, Libya - Days after the United Nations lifted some sanctions against Libya, three USAID health specialists traveled to the North African nation of 5.5 million to assess medical care and possible cooperation.

The team, one of the first U.S. delegations to Libya since relations between Libya and the United States reached their lowest possible level 22 years ago (though ties never were fully severed), found Libyan hosts eager to reconnect with colleagues, professional associations, and medical boards in the United States, said Bob Emrey of the Global Health bureau. Many of the older physicians, he said, had studied or done residencies in the United States.

In their visit to Tripoli and Benghazi, and to smaller towns nearby, the team found the quality of health care was good. Counter to expectations, they found a mixed system of public and private health care, rather than a purely state-run model.

Libyan policy makers were interested in how other countries finance care, insure patients, monitor costs, measure quality of care, and track newly emerging diseases, said Emrey.

SOURCE: Andrew Clements, ANE

Libyans receive free health care, and their health status is good compared to other Middle Eastern countries. For example, infant mortality is reported to be less than 20 per 1,000 births - about the same as neighboring Tunisia. Childhood immunization is nearly universal, and water and sanitation are improving.

Oil revenues have allowed the government to build clinics, buy equipment, train doctors abroad, recruit medical professionals from overseas, and protect the water supply. A $30 billion aqueduct, for example, channels water from south to north, to increase the supply of clean water.

Providing free health care is expensive, however. In the past few years, private health clinics and diagnostic centers with newer equipment and better service have sprung up to compete with the public sector.

The number of HIV infections is estimated at 7,000 by UNAIDS, mainly among injecting drug users, and drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis have recently been detected.

SOURCE: Bob Emrey, GH/HIDN

The delegation urged their Libyan hosts to confront HIV/AIDS head-on, suggesting they look at how other countries talk and share information about it with the public.

Consulting on health care delivery and disease prevention were Bob Emrey and Dr. Adam Slote of Global Health; Dr. Andrew Clements of the Asia and Near East bureau; and four other medical specialists from the Departments of State and Health and Human Services.

The seven-member team spent a week talking to health officials and visiting facilities, exploring how their agencies and other U.S. organizations might cooperate with Libyan counterparts. Possible activities include exchanges and assistance on workforce development, drug management, quality control, and disease outbreak investigation and response.

President Bush offered diplomatic and commercial ties, as well as greater citizen exchange, since Libya pledged publicly to disclose and dismantle all nuclear, chemical and biological programs on December 19, 2003.