Filipinas are at the bottom rung when it comes to their basic health needs.
The Philippines (No. 119) is second to Zambia (No. 118) at the bottom of a list of 122 countries that meet the basic health needs of women, according to a new report, the Hologic Global Women’s Health Index.
The rest of the bottom looks like a list of basket cases: Sierra Leone, Cambodia and Afghanistan (in that order).
The top countries where basic needs are met include Singapore, Sweden, Norway, Israel and Taiwan.
Overall scores in 2021 ranged from a high of 70 in Taiwan to a low of 22 in Afghanistan. Most of the countries and territories with the highest scores in 2021 are high-income economies.
However, a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita does not tell the whole story. The Czech Republic’s score of 34 in preventive care is higher compared to countries with much higher GDP per capita, including Norway (26), Denmark (27) and Switzerland (21).
While the United States spends nearly twice as much as an average developed country does on healthcare, it has a lower life expectancy.
Most of the countries that lead the world on the Index also lead the world in how much of their wealth they funnel back into their health system, including Austria (67), Switzerland (66) and Norway (65).
The inverse is true for countries that spend the least on healthcare, such as the lowest-ranking country, Afghanistan.
Launched in 2020, the Hologic Global Women’s Health Index is a global, multiyear survey of women and men that annually tracks multiple health factors.
Hologic partnered with Gallup in 2019 to develop the groundbreaking study, leading to the Index, described by Hologic as “the world’s most comprehensive study of women’s health.”
Hologic Inc. is a medical technology company primarily focused on women’s health; it sells medical devices for diagnostics, surgery and medical imaging.
Now on its second year, the study provides new data-driven insights from 122 countries and territories, representing the experiences of 94 percent of the world’s women and girls aged 15 and older.
Each year, Hologic and Gallup ask questions that, taken together, account for more than 80 percent of the variance in a woman’s average life expectancy at birth: preventive care, emotional health, opinions of health and safety, basic needs, and individual health.
Based only on women’s answers to these questions, Gallup and Hologic calculate global and country-level scores for each of the individual dimensions, as well as a single-number indicator that summarizes the host of complex factors that contribute to women’s health.
The data provide global leaders and policymakers with information they can use to craft policies that improve the health, quality of life and life expectancy of the world’s women and girls.
“Reflecting on this year’s findings, I worry that women’s health is moving backward,” said Stephen P. MacMillan, Hologic chairman, president and chief executive officer. “The data show that more than 1 billion women didn’t go to a healthcare professional in the past year. We also learned that more than 1.5 billion women weren’t tested for high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer or sexually transmitted diseases — all conditions that harm or kill tens of millions of women each year.”
