Social inequalities and health crises: the forgotten and leave them behind

The 2003 WHO report begins with the words of its Director-General who said: “Today, the global health situation forces us to ask ourselves urgent questions about equality in health. In some areas one can expect to live longer and more comfortably while in others one despairs of being able to contain disease when the means to do so are known”. To illustrate this inequality, the report states that a girl born in Japan has a life expectancy of 85years; if she was born in Sierra Leone, her life expectancy will not exceed 36years. G. Pison 1 confirms that the risk of death for a child under the age of five years is less than 10 by 1000 in North America and in sub-Saharan article attempts to ask these questions, but does not attempt to answer all questions especially the complex ones. We will present, by way of illustration, the case of a locality in a Maghreb country, which had been the subject of numerous works by the author or his students.