The mission and the main powers of the Ministry for Public Health, as defined by Decree  n° 74-1064 du 28 novembre 1974, are as follows:  :

Fundamental mission :

Take care of the population’s health to enable the harmonious development of its physical and mental faculties, and its adaptation to the country’s natural and social environment by fighting against the causes of the physical and mental well-being deterioration that may individually or collectively affect the population. 

this account, it develops, for the government, public health policy, plans it, takes care of its implementation and monitors its execution in the areas of prevention, care, medicine, drugs, laboratories and re-adaptation. 

Main powers :

In the area of prevention  :

• Initiate and stimulate collective and individual educational forms in order to improve the population’s hygiene behaviour. 

• Assist technically any public or private body whose action may have repercussions on population health, especially in the areas of housing control, water consumption, food production, environmental protection and so on. 

• Implement, directly or through authorised bodies, actions of individual or collective prophylaxis, especially mass vaccination, border sanitary control, school hygiene, mother and child hygiene, work hygiene and vocational disease prevention, education and food hygiene, and mental hygiene. 

• Implement disease screening to avert disease outbreaks or plan ahead in due time. 

• Implement and ensure the execution of a family planning policy within the framework of family protection, child physical and psychic self-fulfilment, and the protection of mother’s health. 

In the area of curative actions :

• Promote the organisation of mobile and hospital health care, public or private, with a view to bringing medical and paramedical services as close as possible to the citizen by establishing a health network covering the entire country. 

• Develop statutory instruments regulating the activity of public and private care services. 

• Ensure the administrative and financial supervision of institutions in all cases. 

• Promote, within the framework of the curative action, the creation and organisation of a network for producing, supplying and distributing products and equipment for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes, such as medicine, prosthetics, products of human origin (plasma, blood), or animal origin (serum, vaccines, and so on), and exploration and care equipment. 

• Ensure the country’s normal supply with such different products. 

In the area of medicine, drugs and laboratories 

• Decide on creating and closing pharmacies, laboratories and medical depots, and ensure their inspection. 

• Monitor medicine production and quality. 

• Monitor the import, movement and price nomenclature of pharmaceutical, biological and assimilated products. 

• Monitor the consumption of drugs, and psychotropic and toxic substances. 

• Screening doping. 

In the area of re-adaptation actions

• Promote the creation and organisation of public or private networks of mobile or hospital re-adaptation, especially in the area of physiotherapy, ergotherapy and therapeutic workshops, as well as in the area of thermalism.

To fulfil such mission, the Ministry for Public Health:

• Develops or participates in developing all legislative or statutory instruments relating to the enumerated activities. 

• Takes, in case of emergency, all the measures necessary to health safety in the national territory. 

• Ensures the normalisation, maintenance and harmonious development of the health resources of the country’s public and private sectors, and evaluates their efficiency. 

• Collects basic statistical data on mortality, morbidity and their causes. 

• Conducts or commissions surveys to shed light on the relationship between the population’s health and the country’s economic development, and on the efficiency of the health actions undertaken. 

• Coordinates the action of the health institutions, representing public institutions, and national and international private or public organisations, on a permanent or occasional health action in the country. 

• Takes responsibility for the design and implementation of a training policy for health executives, as deemed necessary, directly, or by participating with other departments or interested bodies. 

• Encourages scientific research, executives’ technical and vocational promotion, and their in-service training. 

• May, in the case of a grave peril threatening the population, acquire or directly manage a given health activity to face an emergency or the failure of an institution or a given organisation, in collaboration with the concerned departments and organisations. 

Supervises: 
Elected professional organisations.
        - Conseil national de l'ordre des médecins de Tunisie  ( http://www.ordre-medecins.org.tn/ )
        - Conseil national de l'ordre des pharmaciens de Tunisie  
        - Conseil national de l'ordre des médecins dentistes de Tunisie   
Medical, juxta-medical and para-medical associations.
Any company that imports, distributes and manufactures medicine.
        - Pharmacie Centrale : http://www.phct.com.tn/fr/index.htm
           - SIPHAT et autres structures publiques ou privées de fabrication des médicaments
Private institutions providing diagnosis, care, medical and paramedical services.
Clinics, first-aid or emergency posts, and any health centre created or managed by public or private bodies, whether to meet their needs, or for humanitarian reasons.
Institutions and organisations as provided for in the regulation into force.