Health and Education
Vanuatu has a tropical climate and over 80% of the population lives in rural, isolated villages with access to their own gardens and food supplies. These geographically isolated communities have minimal access to basic health and education services. Churches and non-government organizations provide a minimal level of support to many rural villages. Vanuatu government health and education services are hard pressed to deal with the rapid increase of urban and peri-urban populations in informal and squatter settlements around Port Vila and to a lesser extent in Luganville. Health services in Port Vila and Luganville provide reasonable health care, often supported and enhanced by visiting doctors.
Education is not compulsory, and school enrolments and attendance are among the lowest in the Pacific. A 1999 estimate for the literacy rate of people aged 15–24 years was about 87% and a 2006 estimate for adult literacy was 78%, although the actual figures are likely to be much lower. The rate of primary school enrolment rose from 74.5% in 1989 to 78.2% in 1999 and then to 93.0% in 2004 but then fell to 85.4% in 2007. The proportion of pupils completing a primary education fell from 90% in 1991 to 72% in 2004.
In Port Vila, and three other centres, are locations of the University of the South Pacific, an educational institution co-owned by twelve Pacific countries. The campus in Port Vila, known as the Emalus Campus, houses the University's law school.
Read more about this topic: Vanuatu
Famous quotes containing the words health and, health and/or education:
“Mens sana in men’s sauna, in the flush
Of health and toilets, private and corporal glee,”
—Anthony Hecht (b. 1923)
“All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and failure helps to make me sad and does me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Casting an eye on the education of children, from whence I can make a judgment of my own, I observe they are instructed in religious matters before they can reason about them, and consequently that all such instruction is nothing else but filling the tender mind of a child with prejudices.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)