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Diseases of poverty and the 10/90 gap 137
Figure 5
Percentage of WHO regions lacking access to
essential medicines 29
All countries
30
China
West Pacific
15
14
India
65
South-East Asian
26
European
14
East Mediterranean
29
American
22
African
47
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Within these populations, it is the poorest socio-economic
groups that disproportionately suffer from a lack of access to
existing medicines. 9 The implications of this failure of public health
policy on global mortality are profound – according to one study,
over 10 million children die unnecessarily each year, almost all in
low-income or poor areas of middle income countries, mostly from
a short list of preventable diseases such as diarrhoea, measles,
malaria and causes related to malnutrition (Black, 2003).
Only one-half (approximately) of sub-Saharan African children
are vaccinated against childhood diseases, and in isolated areas that
number is as low as one child in 20 (WHO, 2002a). A variety of
factors conspire to create this desperate situation, many of them
caused by government mismanagement and interference. These