Over the past few years I’ve been working with Marc Suhrcke, from the WHO office in Venice and Lorenzo Rocco from the University of Padua to understand better the relationship between health and wealth. The Commission on Macroeconomics and Health showed how important health was for economic development in poor countries. We have subsequently shown conclusively how this is also true elsewhere. Specifically, in the European Union, South East Europe, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, those in poor health are less likely to be working, and when they do they work shorter hours and they are less productive.
There are, however, many middle income countries where, although we may reasonably assume that this is so, we have no direct evidence. And we also know that policy-makers like to see local evidence before acting.
For this reason we were asked by colleagues at the World Bank whether we could apply our work to the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. This is a region where, so far, there has been remarkably little health research. The opportunity for us to present some preliminary work was at a meeting of the newly created Middle East and North Africa Health Policy Forum, a grouping of academics and policy makers from across the region. I was joined by my colleague Josep Figueras, who was talking about our experience in the European Observatory in translating evidence into policy.
The meeting was held in Cairo on 8-10th September so it was logical that we should start by looking at some Egyptian data. In fact, there are quite a few household surveys from countries in this region that are suitable for the sorts of analyses we have been doing. There is clearly enormous scope to make use of them.
The first task was to get some basic understanding of the health situation in the region, and in Egypt in particular, given that this is not somewhere I am especially familiar with. The available evidence reveals that Egypt has actually been very successful in improving health. Under-five-mortality has fallen by more than half in two decades and data from the most recent Demographic and Health Survey suggest it has fallen to 46 per 1,000. Male life expectancy has increased from 52.7 years in 1976 to 67.9 in 2003, while the corresponding figures for females are from 57.7 to 72.3. Looking to the future, Egypt has much in its favour. A falling birth rate means that there will be a substantially greater share of the population in the workforce. Fewer children also means that there will be more resources available for their education, a clear priority for future investment. Yet there are challenges. Using a model we have applied elsewhere we were able to show that if adult mortality could be reduced by 3% per year then, by 2030, Egypt’s GDP would be about $8,500 per capita, compared to $6,900 if it stayed as it is now, all else being equal. Unfortunately, even keeping it as it is now may be difficult. We looked at data on body mass among young children. Although there is still some evidence of malnutrition, what is really striking is the very high level of obesity, with almost 14% of under threes overweight in 2000, compared to less than 3% in many otherwise comparable countries.
The health situation in this region is clearly very different from that in eastern Europe, where I do most of my work. However the problems are equally challenging.
There are, however, many middle income countries where, although we may reasonably assume that this is so, we have no direct evidence. And we also know that policy-makers like to see local evidence before acting.
For this reason we were asked by colleagues at the World Bank whether we could apply our work to the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. This is a region where, so far, there has been remarkably little health research. The opportunity for us to present some preliminary work was at a meeting of the newly created Middle East and North Africa Health Policy Forum, a grouping of academics and policy makers from across the region. I was joined by my colleague Josep Figueras, who was talking about our experience in the European Observatory in translating evidence into policy.
The meeting was held in Cairo on 8-10th September so it was logical that we should start by looking at some Egyptian data. In fact, there are quite a few household surveys from countries in this region that are suitable for the sorts of analyses we have been doing. There is clearly enormous scope to make use of them.
The first task was to get some basic understanding of the health situation in the region, and in Egypt in particular, given that this is not somewhere I am especially familiar with. The available evidence reveals that Egypt has actually been very successful in improving health. Under-five-mortality has fallen by more than half in two decades and data from the most recent Demographic and Health Survey suggest it has fallen to 46 per 1,000. Male life expectancy has increased from 52.7 years in 1976 to 67.9 in 2003, while the corresponding figures for females are from 57.7 to 72.3. Looking to the future, Egypt has much in its favour. A falling birth rate means that there will be a substantially greater share of the population in the workforce. Fewer children also means that there will be more resources available for their education, a clear priority for future investment. Yet there are challenges. Using a model we have applied elsewhere we were able to show that if adult mortality could be reduced by 3% per year then, by 2030, Egypt’s GDP would be about $8,500 per capita, compared to $6,900 if it stayed as it is now, all else being equal. Unfortunately, even keeping it as it is now may be difficult. We looked at data on body mass among young children. Although there is still some evidence of malnutrition, what is really striking is the very high level of obesity, with almost 14% of under threes overweight in 2000, compared to less than 3% in many otherwise comparable countries.
The health situation in this region is clearly very different from that in eastern Europe, where I do most of my work. However the problems are equally challenging.
No comments:
Post a Comment