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Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) in Mozambique poses serious health hazards for miners and communities. The World Health Organization (WHO) has been requested to assist the Ministry of Health of Mozambique (MISAU) to develop a Public Health Strategy as part of the National Action Plan (NAP) required under Article 7 of the Minamata Convention.

This report presents an assessment of the institutional readiness to detect, prevent and address health issues associated with ASGM and aims to provide an input to the Ministry of Health (MISAU) to define key priorities in the Public Health Strategy on ASGM. Based on the consultation of representatives of MISAU as well as various other

ministries and stakeholder groups concerned with ASGM, the report assesses institutional capacity strengths and challenges in the public health sector and identifies key stakeholders relevant for the development and implementation of a public health strategy for the ASGM sector.

The assessment was guided by the following questions:

1. To what extent are existing regulations, policies, structures and processes in place at the national and sub-national levels to respond to ASGM health-related issues?
2. Are the current institutional capacities at MISAU available sufficient to deal with health issues in the context of ASGM?
3. What are the strengths and opportunities to enhance existing capacities and what are the challenges that need to be addressed?

The methodological framework consists of three complementary components: the operationalization of the concept of ‘institution’ (institutional dimensions), the clustering of health relevant topics (priority areas), and the establishment of indicators that allow the assessment of each specific institutional component per content-topic (topical indicators).