The worldwide impact of COVID-19 certainly marked a before and after in many aspects, especially in terms of public health. The pandemic disproportionately affected vulnerable populations, including those who are economically disadvantaged, the elderly and people with existing underlying health conditions, and the unvaccinated. Higherrisk populations need better protection against severe illness, more transmissible variants of coronavirus and death due to COVID-19 infection, which isn’t always the case, as they remain critically underserved by vaccination programs in many countries. While facemasks are no longer mandatory and Zoom birthday parties seem like a distant memory, we need to keep in mind that our reality and our privileges are not universal, and COVID is not the only health problem that concerns the global population.
Every year, the World Health Organization (WHO) publishes its annual compilation of health and health-related indicators for its 194 Member States, which has been published since 2005. The 2022 edition reviews more than 50 health-related indicators from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and WHO’s Triple Billion targets, with a focus on the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. From said report, we give you 10 hard facts that help to illustrate the current state of world health statistics:
- People continue to live longer and live more years in good health. Global life expectancy at birth increased from 66.8 years in 2000 to 73.3 years in 2019, and healthy life expectancy (HALE) increased from 58.3 years to 63.7 years.
- The global share of deaths attributable to noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) increased from almost 61% in 2000 to almost 74% in 2019.
- The number of adults aged 30–79 years with raised blood pressure (hypertension) is estimated to have almost doubled to 1.28 billion between 1990 and 2019, mainly due to population growth and aging.
- The total number of children affected by stunting was 27% lower in 2020 than in 2000 and the prevalence rate of stunting also declined. Meanwhile, obesity has increased globally across all ages since 2000.
- The average level of alcohol consumption worldwide declined slightly between 2010 and 2019, with men continuing to consume about three times more alcohol than women.
- Service coverage improved steadily from an index of 45 in 2000 to 67 in 2019, while the proportion of the population with out-of-pocket health spending exceeding 10% of their household budget grew from 9.4% in 2000 to 13.2% in 2017.
- Tobacco use declined more steeply: about 22% of the global population aged 15 years and older were using tobacco in 2020, down from almost 33% in 2000.
- On average, countries reported that about 56% of 28 tracer essential services had been disrupted in the third quarter of 2020 and 41% were still being disrupted in early 2021.
- Global spending on health more than doubled in real terms between 2000 and 2019, reaching 9.8% of the global gross domestic product.
- Approximately 80% of that spending occurred in HICs, with the bulk of it (about 70%) coming from government budgets. In LICs, out-of-pocket spending was the main source of health expenditure (44%), followed by external aid (29%).
Source: https://publichealthupdate.com/world-health-statistics-report-2022/