[extropy-chat] Reasons for longer life.

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Sun Sep 25 15:12:19 UTC 2005


On 9/25/05, Robin Hanson wrote:
> No, you can see that poor countries tend to have worse health.  But many
> things vary between poor and rich countries, so it takes some work to
> figure out which of those things we should attribute the health differences
> to.  There is a large literature on this subject.  The best analyses use
> multiple regressions to try to disentangle the influences.  Most of those
> studies find no effect of medical spending on health.  For example, see:
>
<http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/research/workpapers.nsf/View+to+Link+WebPages/9A18DABAD113598D852567E00055E694?OpenDocument>Child
> Mortality and Public Spending on Health: How Much Does Money Matter?
>

I think you are taking the wrong conclusion from this 1997 report.
What it seems to show to me is that in poor undeveloped countries
there is no point in giving them x million to spend on 'health'
because they don't have the structures to get the services to all the
population. 75% probably disappears in corruption and the rest is
spent on a few hospitals for the government gangsters and their
supporters to use.

The WHO is obviously very concerned that the health spending should
get to the people that need it. And they *know* that this does not
happen in most undeveloped countries.

Read these five chapters from the 2005 report.
<http://www.who.int/whr/2005/chapter2/en/index.html>

Quote:
In many countries, however, universal access to the goods, services
and opportunities that improve or preserve health is still a distant
goal. A varying but large proportion of mothers and children remain
excluded from the health benefits that others in the same country
enjoy. Exclusion is related to socioeconomic inequalities. In many
countries it is a sign of increasing dualism in society: as growing
middle classes in urban areas gain disproportionate access to public
services, including education and health care, they effectively enter
into competition with the poor for scarce resources, and easily come
out on top.

The result is that exclusion from access to health care is commonplace
in poor countries. In the 42 countries that in 2000 accounted for 90%
of all deaths of children under five years of age, 60% of children
with pneumonia failed to get the antibiotic they needed, and 70% of
children with malaria failed to receive treatment . One third of
children did not receive the vitamin A available to others in the same
countries, and half had no safe water or sanitation. From 1999 to
2001, less than 2% of children from endemic malaria areas slept under
insecticide-treated nets every night.

People excluded from health care benefits by such barriers to the
uptake of services are also usually excluded from other services such
as access to electricity, water supply, basic sanitation, education or
information. Their exclusion from care is also reflected in inferior
health indicators.
End Quote.


For undeveloped countries the need is not just for 'health' spending.
They need the whole development cycle of education, democratization,
roads, electricity, sanitation, law and order, etc. to ensure that the
whole population benefits from the health expenditure.


BillK



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list