More than half of all of the children in the world, which die before the age of five, die in Africa. Wider availability of several highly effecti - ve interventions such as oral rehyd - ration therapy in cases of diarrhoea could prevent large proportion of these child deaths. Unfortunately these interventions are usually not available in African countries. Ho - wever both availability of different life-saving health interventions and child mortality varies a lot across African countries. The purpose of this article is to explore what are determinants of child mortality and availability of these interventions in Africa. Both a review of existing research and a statistical analysis of data from 41 African countries point to the quality of governance and control of corruption as the most significant determinant of health system performance and availability of these life-saving interventions in Africa., Jan Klusáček, and Literatura