Tuesday 23 December 2003 WHO report on the world's health  | The World Health Organisation's annual report on the state of the world's health calls for more equality between countries. But economic and social issues continue to affect peoples' health. This report from Ania Lichtarowicz. |
 Listen to the story Inequality of health care is still paramount, says the WHO's latest report. Industrialised countries account for less than 20 percent of the world's population but take 90 percent of health spending. In Japan more than five hundred dollars is spent on drugs per person per year. This compares to just three dollars in Sierra Leone. Only slightly more is spent in many sub-Saharan countries.
Over the last fifty years, life expectancy has increased globally from forty six years to sixty five. But today, instead of the gap being between the developed and developing countries, it's now biggest between the very poorest nations and all other countries. The burden of infectious diseases, including HIV, as well as chronic conditions, coupled with a lack of health care, has led to this situation.
However, it's children who are most affected. Almost fifty seven million people died in 2002, nearly twenty per cent children of less than 5 years of age, and ninety eight per cent of these deaths occurred in developing countries.
Ania Lichtarowicz, BBC
Listen to the words Inequality here, a difference in the provision of health care between different groups health care the system including doctors, nurses and hospitals that keeps people in a country healthy paramount more important than anything else health spending the money spent on health care compares to when you compare two things you consider their similarities or, here, the differences between them life expectancy the length of time a person normally lives the gap the difference chronic conditions medical problems which continue for a long time coupled with together with, as well as most affected the greatest impact is on children | |  | | | SEARCH IN LEARNING ENGLISH | | | |
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