Gap in health care between rich, poor widen

[Angel]

Life expectancies have collapsed in some of the poorest countries to half the level of the richest-attributable to the ravages of HIV/AIDS parts of sub-Saharan Africa and to more than dozen "failed states", according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report issued here Friday.

World Health Report 2006 said these setbacks have been accompanied by growing fears, in rich and poor countries alike, of new infectious threat such as SARS and avian influenza and "hidden" behavioral conditions such as mental disorders and domestic violence.


Countries demonstrate enormous diversity in the skill mix of health terms the ratio of nurses to doctors ranges from nearly 8:1 in Africa to 1.5:1 in the Western Pacific region, according to the report.

Typically, more than 70 percent of doctors are male in the world while more than 70 percent of nurses are female, a market gender imbalance, said the report.

Africa's density of health workforce per 1,000 population is 2.3 compared with 18.9 of Europe, Americans' 24.8, and the world average 9.3.

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 11 percent of the world's population and has 24 percent of the global burden of disease, but health workers in the region account for only 3 percent of world's total health workers commanding less than 1 percent of world health expenditure.

The Americas with 10 percent of the global burden of disease, has 37 percent of the world health workers spending more than 50 of the world's health financing, said the report.

The report said demand for service providers will escalate markedly in all countries -- rich and poor. Richer countries face a future of low fertility and large populations of elderly people, which will cause a shift towards chronic and degenerative diseases with high care demands.

Without massively increasing training of workers in the wealthy countries, these growing gaps will exert even greater pressure on the outflow of health workers from poorer regions.
Many poorer countries are dealing with unfinished agendas of infectious diseases and the rapid emergence of chronic illness complicated by the magnitude the HIV/AIDS epidemic, said the report.