Haiti’s former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who ruled the impoverished Caribbean nation from 1971 until his ouster in 1986, has died of a heart attack aged 63, officials say.

The death on Saturday of Duvalier, who returned to Haiti in 2011 after 25 years of exile, was announced by the nation’s health minister, Florence Guillaume Duperval.

“The family phoned us this morning asking us to send a (medical) helicopter,” as the former dictator appeared be suffering a heart attack, she said.

“They tried to administer first aid to him on the scene, but he died” a short time later, Duperval said.

Duvalier came to power when he was just 19 years old, after the death of his father Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier.

For a decade-and-a-half, the then-portly, boyish-looking Duvalier ruled as Haiti’s self-proclaimed “president for life” until he was forced into exile in a popular uprising, as pro-democracy forces rallied in the streets amid international condemnation of the rampant human rights abuses during his regime.

Like his father, Baby Doc came to rule Haiti with an iron fist – barring opposition, clamping down on dissidents, rubber-stamping his own laws and pocketing government revenue.

And like his ruthless father, he also made liberal use of the dreaded Tonton Macoutes, a secret police force loyal to the Duvalier family.

The notorious sunglass-toting Macoutes terrorised Haitians, arresting, torturing untold numbers of political opponents, thousands of whom vanished without ever being accounted for.

Born in Port-au-Prince on July 3, 1951, the young Duvalier watched the intrigue and paranoia escalate in his father’s 14-year government, which began in 1957 and saw waves of arrests, executions, bombings and 11 failed coups.

At the age of 11 he survived an attack that killed three of his bodyguards.

An estimated 30,000 people were killed during the reign of the Duvalier father and son, rights activists said.

The younger Duvalier fled Haiti in 1986 for a life of luxury in France, thanks to the hundreds of millions of dollars allegedly plundered from the coffers of the western hemisphere’s most impoverished country.

Years of efforts to force his family to return the pilfered funds proved fruitless.

In the late 1990s former political prisoners brought charges of “crimes against humanity” against Baby Doc in a Paris court, claiming they were tortured over a period of years, but the lawsuit later foundered.

In 2007, Duvalier called on Haitians to forgive him for “mistakes” committed during his rule, even as the government in power at the time insisted he face trial.

At the time of his death, he was indeed charged in a slow-moving prosecution on corruption and embezzlement allegations dating to his years in power. He was said in reports to have looted as much as $US300 million ($A325 million) before being forced to flee.

Efforts to bring him to justice both in exile and after his return encountered numerous delays brought about by legal motions and appeals, and proved fruitless in the end.

Duvalier, who returned home the year after Haiti was levelled by a devastating 2010 earthquake, was meant as a gesture of solidarity with the stricken nation, still mired in grinding poverty and widespread social turmoil.