Half of the world’s population lacks essential healthcare: WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that half of the world’s total population does not have access to essential healthcare despite global efforts.

According to the director general of the world body, Tedros Ghebreyesus, a significant number of people are excluded from health care and around two billion people face financial difficulties due to out-of-pocket spending on health.

Tedros said this on Monday at the 77th World Health Assembly held in Geneva, Switzerland. The assembly attended by world leaders has as its theme: “All for health, health for all.”

At the event expected to end on June 1, Ghebreyesus said there is a regression in the rate of financial protection of citizens seeking medical care globally.

He said: “Half of the world’s population is not fully covered by essential health services. This is amazing. We estimate that 585 million more people will be covered by essential health services without catastrophic health spending by 2025, just over half of our goal of 1 billion.

“While 30 percent of countries have made progress since 2000 in both service coverage and financial protection, globally we are moving backwards on financial protection.”

As a way to improve this, the WHO official said the organization is supporting some countries that have made Universal Health Coverage commitments to improve the quality and availability of healthcare delivery in their countries.

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He said the global body is working in more than 120 countries through the UHC Alliance.

“We also joined a consortium of multilateral development banks to launch the Health Impact Investment Platform, with funds of €1.5 billion to support primary health care projects in countries. Our goal is to start making disbursements starting in September.

“Last year, we supported 23 countries to strengthen their health and care workforce,” he said.

Improved maternal health

To improve maternal, newborn and child care, WHO said it has supported 43 countries to develop acceleration plans to reduce mortality.

Ghebreyesus said the organization is prepared to train nurses and midwives in these countries to use a set of basic emergency care tools that can reduce hospital mortality by up to half.

He said the global institution has also helped 23 priority countries facilitate access to quality, survivor-centered sexual violence services.

He noted that the organization has also supported 18 countries to strengthen care for older people.

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“And 20 more countries adopted laws on various aspects of age-related health issues. We published a new report showing that globally, one in six people of reproductive age suffer from infertility.

“Of course, the goal of all this work to strengthen health systems is to improve health outcomes, and in that sense, there is much reason to rejoice,” he said.

diet, nutrition

Ghebreyesus also noted that there have been positive trends in efforts to improve nutrition and healthy diets.

He said that in the previous year, 13 countries passed or implemented policies to eliminate trans fats from their food supplies. As such, half of the world’s population is now protected by such policies, compared to just seven percent in 2018.

The Director-General further noted that after WHO launched its call to action campaign, it estimated that the policies helped reduce the number of annual deaths caused by trans fats by two-thirds.

He said: “With the support of WHO, more and more countries are taking action to tackle childhood obesity and wasting and increase breastfeeding; and 28 countries increased taxes on alcohol, tobacco or sugary drinks. We are also working to make the world’s roads safer.

“Over the last decade, 45 countries have reduced traffic deaths by at least 30 percent. And 10 have achieved a reduction of 50 percent or more: Belarus, Brunei Darussalam, Denmark, the Russian Federation, Japan, Lithuania, Norway, Trinidad and Tobago, the Russian Federation and Venezuela.

“And we are increasing our work in behavioral sciences to better understand why people make decisions about their health.”

A series of strategic roundtables will be held at the Assembly and during these sessions, WHO delegates, partner agencies, civil society representatives and WHO experts will discuss current and future priorities for public health issues.