A new World Health Organization report says the poor around the world are dying on a "grand scale" even as economies of developing and industrial countries have shown "enormous (increases) in global wealth."
The WHO report, which is titled "Closing the Gap in a Generation," says social and economic disparities between countries and within countries are responsible for large gaps in health between the rich and poorest citizens.
"(The) toxic combination of bad policies, economics, and politics is, in large measure responsible for the fact that a majority of people in the world do not enjoy the good health that is biologically possible," the authors of the report concluded.
"Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale."
The report was written by a commission of academics, former heads of state, and former ministers of health. The commissioners said that health inequities have long been measured between countries, but their three-year probe also looked at "health gradients" within countries.
The investigators found that:
- A child born to a Bolivian mother with no education has 10 per cent chance of dying, while one born to a woman with at least secondary education has a 0.4 per cent chance
- Indigenous Australian men live 17 years less on average than all other Australian males
- Child mortality in the slums of Nairobi is 2.5 times higher than in other parts of the city
- In the United States, 886,202 deaths would have been averted between 1991 and 2000 if mortality rates between white and African Americans were equalized
The World Health Organization's commissioner to Canada said on Thursday that Canada's wealth masks the poverty that exists in cities across the country. Monique Begin said 22 per cent of Montreal's population lives below the poverty line. The situation is also dire, she said, for Canada's aboriginal peoples, with at least 100 reserves that do not have safe drinking water.
This situation exists in the "country of lakes and rivers," Begin told CTV's Canada AM.
Vancouver's Downtown Eastside "is so unreal that when the commissioners visited, they all asked me, 'Monique, where are we? That's Canada! I'm a citizen and I had difficulty explaining," she said.
Equitable economic policies needed
"Economic growth is raising incomes in many countries but increasing national wealth alone does not necessarily increase national health. Without equitable distribution of benefits, national growth can even exacerbate inequities," said a WHO press release on the report.
The commission offered several overarching recommendations to improve conditions for the world's poorest and most vulnerable citizens. They include:
- Improving daily living conditions by improving early child development and education for girls and boys and by improving overall working conditions
- Tackling inequitable distribution of power, money, and resources
- Acknowledging there is a problem and ensuring health inequities are measured
The commissioners said they would like to see countries promote access to universal health care systems based on principals of equity, disease prevention and health promotion.
"The health-care system is itself a social determinant of health, influenced by and influencing the effect of other social determinants," the commissioners said in their executive summary.
The press release detailing the report said that the commission has already "inspired" countries like Canada to become partners to improve health inequities.
Countries like Canada "are already developing policies across governments to tackle (inequities). These examples show that change is possible through political will," said the WHO press release.
