Wednesday 29 August 2007

UK Healthcare

The World Health Organisation published the report, "The World Health Report 2000 - Health Systems : Improving Performance"

This lists 190 countries in order of countries with the best to countries with the worst health.

Any guesses where the UK came?

Go on, have a guess. Pick a number from 1 to 190. Got it? Good. Now, have a rummage around at the rankings and see how you fared.

I was pleasantly surprised.

Much goodness.

4 comments:

Spirit of 1976 said...

WE'RE NUMBER EIGHTEEN!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

Next year we're taking on the Netherlands.

I notice the good ol' USA was wedged down there between Costa Rica and Slovenia. So much for all the Yanks who want to tell us how lousy our NHS is.

I sometimes think one consequence of reading too many posts on Dr Rant and NHS Blog Doc is that we forget that occasionally the NHS actually gets things right.

Spirit of 1976 said...

Also, how come Colombia is one above Sweden? They really must be re-investing all that cocaine money...

The Shrink said...

Indeed we're 18th, neat, huh?

The methodology the World Health Organisation used wasn't perfect. Such a massive review over 190 countries couldn't be hugely complex and sophisticated (and largely focussed on mortality rates).

Even so, there's some useful validity to their appraisal of different countries' health economies and rankings.

And yes, we do pretty good :-)

Calavera said...

Hmm... I still thought that we would be higher....?