Health care systems by country
Throughout the 1990s, the government, as part of its reconstruction program, devoted ever-increasing amounts of funding to the social and health sectors, which brought corresponding improvements in school enrollments, adult literacy, and infant mortality rates.
Because of growing population pressure on agricultural and pastoral land, soil degradation, and severe droughts that have occurred each decade since the 1970s, per capita food production is declining.
[64] In June 2011, the Guinean government announced the establishment of an air ticket solidarity levy on all flights taking off from national soil, with funds going to UNITAID to support expanded access to treatment for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
For most of the period since independence in 1956, Sudan has experienced civil war, which has diverted resources to military use that otherwise might have gone into health care and training of professionals, many of whom have migrated in search of more gainful employment.
Malnutrition is widespread outside the central Nile corridor because of population displacement from war and from recurrent droughts; these same factors together with a scarcity of medicines make diseases difficult to control.
The United Nations placed the rate of human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) infection in late 2003 at 2.3 percent for adults, quite low by regional standards.
Universality states that all citizens must have access to health care services, without any form of discrimination, regarding skin color, income, social status, gender or any other variable.
SUS also has guidelines for its implementation, the most peculiar being popular participation, which defines that all policies are to be planned and supervised directly by the population, through local, city, state and national health councils and conferences.
[94] In 2019, 80 percent of Canadian adults self-reported having at least one major risk factor for chronic disease: smoking, physical inactivity, unhealthy eating or excessive alcohol use.
[95] Canada has one of the highest rates of adult obesity among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries attributing to approximately 2.7 million cases of diabetes (types 1 and 2 combined).
The health care system has three components: the social security institute, governmental services for the un-insured (Seguro Popular), and the private sector that is financed almost completely from out of pocket money.
The country has a life expectancy higher than the global average but it also has a high risk of infection, especially near the jungle and other isolated areas, due to the warm climate that favours the reproduction of various insects and bacteria.
The Chronic Disease Assistance Programme provides citizens with government-paid prescription drugs and other pharmaceutical items to combat several health conditions.
Only the most seriously ill patients were referred to the third and final tier, the county hospitals, which served 200,000 to 600,000 people each and were staffed by senior doctors who held degrees from 5-year medical schools.
To ensure a higher level of care, a number of state enterprises and government agencies sent their employees directly to district or municipal hospitals, circumventing the paramedical, or barefoot doctor, stage.
This aimed to cover the bottom 50% (500 million people) of the country's population working in the unorganized sector (enterprises having less than 10 employees) and offers them free treatment even at private hospitals.
Supplementary private health insurance is available only to cover the co-payments or non-covered costs, and usually makes a fixed payment per days in hospital or per surgery performed, rather than per actual expenditure.
The quality of health care, which remained entirely under state control in 2006, has declined in the post-Soviet era because of insufficient funding and the loss of technical experts through emigration.
Doctors are required to undergo a 2-year internship and perform 3 years of service with public hospitals throughout the nation, ensuring adequate coverage of medical needs for the general population.
[158] Standards of health care are considered to be generally high in the United Arab Emirates, resulting from increased government spending during strong economic years.
A state-of-the-art general hospital has opened in Abu Dhabi with a projected bed capacity of 143, a trauma unit, and the first home health care program in the UAE.
Although all citizens nominally are entitled to free health care, in the post-Soviet era bribery has become a common way to bypass the slow and limited service of the state system.
Danish citizens may choose between two systems of primary health care: medical care paid for by the government provided by a doctor whom the individual chooses for a year and by those specialists to whom the doctor refers the patient; or complete freedom of choice of any physician or specialist at any time, with state reimbursement of about two-thirds of the cost for medical bills paid directly by the patient.
The government-paid guidance and assistance given to mothers of newborn children by public health nurses have resulted in a low infant mortality rate of 4 per 1,000 live births (2000).
In Finland, public medical services at clinics and hospitals are run by the municipalities (local government) and are funded 78% by taxation, 20% by patients through access charges, and by others 2%.
[172] Provider compensation rates are negotiated in complex corporatist social bargaining among specified autonomously organized interest groups (e.g. physicians' associations) at the level of federal states.
In all life-threatening cases, emergency medical services, including ambulance vehicles, hospitalization, surgery, etc., are completely free of charge and any documents and name/surname are not required.
In the 1990s, after the private carriers began to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions – and when the uninsured population of Switzerland reached 5% – the Swiss held a referendum (1995) and adopted their present system.
[210] Though the public system dominates healthcare provision in England, private health care and a wide variety of alternative and complementary treatments are available for those willing and able to pay.
Scotland's NHS remains a separate body from the other public health systems in the UK which can lead to confusion from patients when "cross-border" or emergency care is involved.
