The countries with the best performing healthcare systems are in Europe, according to a ranking established by the Lancet.
Europe, promised land for health? According to a ranking established by the journal The Lancet, it is in Western Europe that we find the most efficient health systems. The work was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This is a comparative study, conducted between 1990 and 2015, which ranks the health systems of 195 countries based on an indicator assessing the quality of care and its accessibility.
Avoidable mortality
Thus, a certain number of criteria are taken into account in this ranking, in particular the mortality rates of 32 diseases (tuberculosis, breast cancer, leukemia, cardiovascular diseases, etc.). These pathologies have a so-called avoidable mortality: with effective and rapid access to care, the number of deaths should be limited.
However, according to the results, 13 of the 15 countries at the top of this list are located in Western Europe. With a score of 95 out of 100, the Principality of Andorra is in first position, followed by Iceland (94) and Switzerland (92). Australia comes in sixth place and Japan in 11th place.
New #GBDstudy ranks health care access and quality for 195 countries, according to 32 diseases – paper at: https://t.co/4dOhP9EMKZ @IHME_UW pic.twitter.com/IKRrB8Wxas
— The Lancet (@TheLancet) May 19, 2017
France goes up
France, meanwhile, gets the score of 88 and holds the fifteenth place in this ranking. The country has improved its performance: last year, the Lancet ranked him 24th. Its anti-smoking policy, less rigorous than in other states, had been sanctioned, as had the death rate due to collective violence” which could be explained by the attacks last year.
The United States health system appears rather weakened, positioned in 35th place, with only 81 points. As for the United Kingdom, it is only 30th (85). At the other end of this ranking, we find Somalia (34), Afghanistan (32) and, in last place, the Central African Republic (29).
The Lancet
The average increases
Overall, the study shows that the average scores have tended to increase since 1990, suggesting a general improvement in health systems across the world. The world average has thus gone from 40.7 to 53.7 in a quarter of a century. The authors note that “167 countries have seen the accessibility and quality of their health system increase significantly”.
But the rise in the general average does not hide deep inequalities between countries, which have even widened over the years, according to this work. Indeed, the gap between the first and last country increased by four points between 1990 and 2015.
Delays in developed countries
Moreover, some countries are lagging far behind in terms of their level of development. This is the case of the United States, whose score is ten points lower than what one would expect from a country with such an economic level.
For the authors, these mixed results “sound like a warning: the increase in the level of development does not necessarily lead to an improvement in the quality and access to the health system”.
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