The chart above shows infant mortality rates throughout the world. Not surprisingly, the countries with the lowest infant mortality rates tend to be the richest. The United States and Western Europe have the minimum infant mortality rate, while Central Africa loses more than 150 per 1000 babies born. A nation’s ability to take care of its most helpless members reflects on its overall healthcare system. Therefore, with regards to most nations’ healthcare systems, wealth is an indication of health.
The main issues concerned with the healthcare systems of first world countries are promptness of treatment (the time you wait to see a doctor), quality of treatment, choice of who treats you, and price (operation and prescription drugs). Many European nations have developed a nationalized healthcare plan. Countries with nationalized health plans, such as France, Britain, and Canada, offer their citizens government sponsored, total health coverage. This somewhat socialized healthcare system makes sure 100% of their citizens are covered. This plan eliminates excess costs for healthcare, as the government bears the burden of its taxpayers’ health problems and prescription drug needs. Taxes are higher in these countries, but according to medicaldesign.com, “Nationalized healthcare could be the safety net that keeps families from falling into poverty and the first wrung on a ladder that lets them climb out.”
The burdens of a Nationalized system are numerous. Under a nationalized system, if a patient’s problem isn’t an emergency he could be on a waiting list for months. Quality of treatment is also an issue. In Britain, “When government planners do get the urge to cut costs, they will short-change patients. In a few years, equipment will likely be out of date or malfunctioning.” (-medicaldesign.com) Lastly, since the government sponsors all of its citizens, a citizen loses his choice of doctor and hospital. It is a large enough challenge to simply fit him into a government hospital’s busy schedule.
Middle-class to wealthy Europeans are finding a way around their nation’s constrictive healthcare systems. Private hospitals exist around Europe so that people of substantial means can receive prompt, American style healthcare. According to “The Sunday Telegraph,” people can also purchase “International Healthcare Plans” that allow the insurance holder to choose any hospitals around the world that best treat his condition. If a European wants to include hospitals in the United States and Canada on his IHP, it will cost the individual around 3,335 pounds.
Outside of the first world, with few exceptions, healthcare systems are dilapidated. Since wealth is health, the third world is generally sick.
Cases of Leprosy Worldwide:
Leprosy is probably not a disease that’s on the radar of most westerners, but it is plainly prevalent in the southern hemisphere. Leprosy, once viewed as an unsightly judgement from God, modern medicine has made it treatable with a very high success rate. Countries with lepers are lacking most modern prescription drugs, and the populace generally cannot afford any non-traditional form of healthcare. If a country has trouble treating leprosy, imagine the trouble it has treating expensive, complicated diseases, like HIV.
In 2006, 2.9 million people died from AIDS. 18,000 were from the USA… 2.1 million were from Sub-Saharan Africa. AIDS is a major modern health concern that researchers around the globe are attempting to find a cure for. Like Leprosy, its early form, called HIV, can be treated to some extent with expensive drugs. Poor countries don’t have access to these drugs, once again proving that wealth is health.
Due to the interconnectedness of our modern world, treating illnesses is becoming increasingly difficult. In the time of our great grandfathers, airplanes didn’t exist to transport a person infected with the Ebola virus (which kills a person in less than a week) across two continents in less than a day. Now, each section of the world has the ability to share its ailments with the others efficiently. Our globalizing world has improved our worldly knowledge, but it has greatly complicated the world’s healthcare practices. Potential pandemics, like bird flu, would require quick responses from drug researchers to find a cure/vaccine. Illnesses remind us that we are all in the same boat, within coughing distance. Of course, wealthy people are in the sanitary section of the boat with trained doctors ready to operate in case of emergency, while the world’s poor rely on their wits and genes for survival.
Sources:
http://www.medicaldesign.com/articles/ID/12731
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7307/248
http://web.lexisnexis.com/scholastic/document?_m=c44e282ae3b6f949dd27e3b7e05276fc&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVzb-zSkVk&_md5=defa7bd41e914277028095eed09e8fb4
http://web.lexisnexis.com/scholastic/document?_m=8d33876fbdfaa7c7457516a88b445b1f&_docnum=16&wchp=dGLbVzb-zSkVk&_md5=c1a52ffb8985325eab6683af6a61b216
http://www.globalhealthreporting.org/diseaseinfo.asp?id=23
http://web.lexisnexis.com/scholastic/document?_m=11f524db1beb1606ad0fd358767099fa&_docnum=34&wchp=dGLbVzb-zSkVk&_md5=de173c1e9e95dafd0a7af282cf3f333e
http://www.leprosymission.org.nz/aboutus/statistics.shtml
Images:
http://www.leprosymission.org.nz/aboutus/images/statsmap.gif
http://www.who.int/healthinfo/statistics/01.whostat2005map_under5mortality.jpg
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~neils/africa/images/namibia/aids.gif
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