Checking Up on Health

• Pages: 8-9

Page 8

In Most parts of the world, people are healthier and living longer, thanks to improved health services and living conditions and the more widespread use of immunization, antibiotics, and better contraceptives. Although this trend is likely to continue, hopes are fading in some regions where progress slowed or stopped in the 1990s, primarily as a result of the AIDS epidemic. Indeed, life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa declined from 50 to 46 years between 1990 and 2001.

Moreover, most regions of the developing world will not, at the current pace, reach the Millennium Development Goals for health by 2015-including reducing child and maternal mortality and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. Here, we give a snapshot of changes in the world's health and demographic conditions, and, in the following pages, four articles explore the importance of good health for economic development.

Better health care has extended lives and . . . lowered under-5 mortality rates worldwide.

[ SEE THE GRAPHIC AT THE ATTACHED PDF ]

This, in turn, has led to lower fertility rates . . . and thus slower population growth rates.

[ SEE THE GRAPHIC AT THE ATTACHED PDF ]

Worldwide, youth dependency is falling steadily . . . while elderly dependency is beginning to rise.

[ SEE THE GRAPHIC AT THE ATTACHED PDF ]

Page 9

People in developing countries suffer from far higher rates of infectious diseases than do people in the developed world. For example, about 99 percent of all the deaths from AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria occur in developing countries. To finance a dramatic turnaround in the fight against these diseases, the UN Global Fund was created in 2001. AIDS, in particular, has ravaged populations in the developing world, and major childhood infections and maternal mortality continue to present formidable challenges. At the same time, noncommunicable diseases, such as heart disease and cancer, already pose huge and rapidly growing threats as populations continue to age. In 2001, over 13 million people in developing countries died of cardiovascular diseases alone. This figure is startling compared...