Encouraging demand for new and increasingly cheap interventions available now can boost health in developing countries, says Charles Kenny. The conventional wisdom is that wealthier is healthier: staying alive longer takes expensive stuff, and so a country's quickest way to better health for its people is economic development. There's a lot to that argument. Good nutrition, shelter, hospitals — they all cost money. And that's surely a big part of why life expectancies in high-income countries are twenty years longer than those in low-income countries worldwide, according to World Bank data. Even within countries, household surveys suggest richer families live longer and stay healthier than poorer ones.
Encouraging demand for new and increasingly cheap interventions available now can boost health in developing countries, says Charles Kenny. The conventional wisdom is that wealthier is healthier: staying alive longer takes expensive stuff, and so a country's quickest way to better health for its people is economic development. There's a lot to that argument. Good nutrition, shelter, hospitals — they all cost money. And that's surely a big part of why life expectancies in high-income countries are twenty years longer than those in low-income countries worldwide, according to World Bank data. Even within countries, household surveys suggest richer families live longer and stay healthier than poorer ones.
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But the good news is that income is only one factor, and not the most important one, in explaining global health outcomes. It doesn't take a lot of money to sustain a long and healthy life even in the poorest countries. The challenge is to ensure that a cheap basic package of health interventions is available to — and is used by — all.
For further information: http://www.scidev.net/en/health/opinions/don-t-wait-for-wealth-better-health-needs-basic-tools-1.html?utm_source=link&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=en_opinions
Photo: Flickr/ Gates Foundation
