France, 15th in the world ranking of health systems

France could be a better student when it comes to the quality of its health system. This is what emerges from a study published in the British journal The Lancet. It has established a comparison of health services in 195 countries between 1990 and 2015 in order to assess the quality and access to care for populations. Each country was scored on a scale of 0 to 100.

The highest rated nation is Andorra with an overall score of 95. At the other end of the ranking is Central African Republic with 29.

What about France? With a score of 88, it is at the top of the rankings without doing well. In front of it, we find Iceland (94), Switzerland (92).

Thirteen of the top fifteen countries in the ranking are in Western Europe, plus Australia (6th, 90) and Japan (11th, 89). The United States is only in 35th place (81 ) and the UK at 30th (85).

32 preventable causes of death

To achieve this classification, the researchers used an index ofaccess and quality of carebased on 32 causes of death related to pathologies that could be avoided by appropriate and effective medical care. Preventable causes of death include tuberculosis, diarrheal diseases, respiratory infections, various cancers, tetanus, diphtheria, rheumatic heart disease, hypertension, stroke, tuberculosisetc.

One thing is clear, according to the authors: many deaths could be avoided in countries where treatments for these diseases exist.

“What we found about healthcare access and quality is disturbing,” observes Dr. Christopher Murray, lead author of the study and director of the Institute for Health Measurement and Evaluation ( IHME) at the University of Washington (USA). “Getting a strong economy doesn’t guarantee good health care. Neither does great medical technology. We know this because people aren’t getting the care that should be expected for diseases with established treatments.”

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