People are entitled to their basic human rights, including the right to affordable health care. It shouldn’t matter which nationality, gender, ethnicity, skin colour or religion people belong to. Many countries around the world are doing their best to provide healthcare to its residents. But, the truth is that developing nations are struggling to provide adequate healthcare. This is due to lack of resources that could ensure creating of quality, acceptable and adequate healthcare. Differences in the provision of health care are often mirror of the differences in equality. These are differences that divide them into those who can afford health care and those who can’t. There is a paradox in this equality, poverty leads to poor health and poor health leads to problems in finding a job or in getting out from poverty. As you can see there is a significant inequality in the provision of health care, not only among the countries but inside the country also.
One of the main standards of healthcare is universal access. Universal access means that affordable and comprehensive healthcare need to be available on an equitable basis. It is also important that adequate hospitals, community health facilities, trained healthcare professionals, goods, drugs and services are available – for everyone, everywhere. Unfortunately, this is not true in many countries across the world. There are less than 5 countries in Africa that have more than 10 physicians per 10,000 residents. Some of these countries like Benin, Chad or Mozambique have less than 1 physician per 10,000 people. Can you believe that? Compare this to Europe where there are less the 5 countries that have less than 20 physicians per 10,000 residents. This is not a small difference. Check out this interesting infographic to find out incredible facts and statistic about providing healthcare across the world.
