Biomedical Research in Developing Countries - UNICRI

THE HEALTH CARE SCENARIO IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD
In the area of healthcare, the WHO shows that developing countries are still
devoting a scarce percentage of their GDP to health expenditure. 6
Table 2 – Total expenditure on health per capita, 2004
The WHO World Health Statistics for 2008 7 reports that most developing countries
still fall below the 10% indicator for the general government expenditure on health
as percentage of total government expenditure, in 2005. As it is immediately visible
in table 2, the highest number of countries with low health resources is
concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa. Isolated examples of virtuosity in this Region
are Liberia, after the democratic elections, with 36.3%, Botswana with 18.2 and
Malawi with 16.6 respectively. Burundi with 2.3%, Nigeria with 3.5% and Angola
with 4.7% are the countries that engage less resources in public expenditure on
health. In the Abuja Declaration, the result of a high level meeting of African Union
Heads of State and Government held in 2000, participants had committed to reach
the target of allocating at least 15% of the states’ annual budget to the improvement
of the health sector within a few years. However, according to a WHO statistic, per
capita average expenditure on health in low-income countries in 2005 was US$
16,00, while the corresponding figure for high-income countries reached US$
2.672,00.
6 WHO, The World Health Report, Primary Health Care – Now More Than Ever, Geneva, 2008
7 WHO, The World Health Statistics, Geneva, 2008 (http://www.who.int/whosis/whostat/2008/en/ accessed
October 2008)
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