Benin

Benin is located in western Africa and is flanked by Togo and Nigeria, with a narrow border on the Bight of Benin. A French colony from 1872 to 1960, the former state of Dahomey has struggled to find its economic footing since independence. Most of the population gets by on subsistence farming, and suffers from a high burden of infectious disease.

The population of Benin is 8,100,000, growing at 2.67 percent annually. The birth rate is 38.1 per 1,000 population and the death rate is 11.94 per 1,000 population. Median age is 17.7 years. Life expectancy is 52.28 years for males and 54.63 years for females. About 48 percent of the population lives in urban areas. Poverty is rife: gross national income is U.S. $510, and 31 percent of the population gets by on U.S. $1 a day.

With a tropical climate and poor sanitation, communicable disease is the biggest threat to the Beninese. Malaria and yellow fever are common. Benin lies within the African Meningitis Belt, and has suffered through frequent epidemics of the meningococcal form of the disease. With only 67 percent of the people able to access clean water and between 11 and 33 percent of the population using sanitary waste facilities, diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid are endemic. Rates of cholera and trypanosomaisis have dropped in recent years, and now seem to be under control.

HIV/AIDS has struck Benin hard over the last decade, with an adult prevalence rate of 1.8 percent. An estimated 77,000 Beninese are living with the virus, 45,000 of them women. The country has a good surveillance system and has instituted a variety of educational programs. While not all at-risk populations are being reached, there have been some notable successes. Between 1996 and 2002, the rate of infection among sex workers dropped from 59.5 percent to 38.9 percent.

Benin has a high rate of child mortality, with 111 deaths per 1,000 for infants under the age of 1, and 150 deaths per 1,000 for those between the age of 1 and 5. The United Nations Children's Fund calculates that 23 percent of Beninese children under 5 are underweight, 31 percent show signs of stunting, and 8 percent are wasting. There are an estimated 370,000 orphans under the age of 17, with the AIDS epidemic likely to increase that number in coming years. More than a quarter of children are in the labor force, and 37 percent marry before the age of 18. Only 48 percent of males and 23 percent of females are literate.

The total fertility rate in Benin is 5.08 children per woman. Childbearing begins early, and is assumed to lead to a high percentage of cases of obstetric fistula, a serious health issue that has not yet been recognized by the government. Nineteen percent of women have access to contraception; only 3 percent use modern [Page 222]birth control methods. About 80 percent receive some prenatal care. Almost all women who give birth in the cities do so with a trained attendant. In the rural areas, only 23 percent have trained care. The maternal mortality rate is consequently very high at 880 deaths per 100,000 live births.

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