Best Countries For A Child To Fall Sick In

No one ever wants to see a child become sick -- but, if he or she does, what's the No. 1 country for that to happen, based on how many health-care workers are available to take care of the child?

Not the United States, according to a ranking of 161 countries, compiled by the nonprofit Save the Children. You can find the full ranking here.

The index is based on the number of health care workers (like doctors, nurses and midwives) available for every 10,000 people in a country, as well as their reach and impact on the population. It also factors in the proportion of kids who get vaccinated, as well as mothers who are able to get emergency care during childbirth.

According to the World Health Organization, 23 health care workers per 10,000 people is optimal for mothers and kids to receive the care they need. The U.S. has about 125 health workers for every 10,000 people, coming in at No. 15, according to the Save the Children index.

The bottom-ranking countries on the list were Somalia and Chad, with an average of seven health workers for every 10,000 people.

In some of these bottom-ranked countries, health workers are highly concentrated in urban or city areas, thereby making it hard for people in rural environments to get health care, Save the Children reported.

Here are the 10 countries that ranked at the top, for health worker reach and impact -- making them the best countries for a child to fall sick in, according to this scale.

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Comments

[Oceras]

12:57 PM on 09/18/2011

How the index was computed:
http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/en/docs/Comms_health_workers_reach_index_final_narrative.pdf

[Oceras]

12:34 PM on 09/18/2011

The United States is 15th but, mind you, that's behind Uzbekistan, Cuba (a desperately poor nation), and Belarus. The United States has, by far, the largest economy on the planet. It is the richest nation (not per capita). Why would a nation with these criteria not have the best health care system? It's because health care is Balkanized. Each state has its own rules and regulations, and health care is rationed by a private health insurance system It's also because the United States does not see fit to ensure that all of its citizens have access to health care or health insurance.

All of this cries out for us to develop a nationwide single-payer health care system.

[BigWillyG]

10:51 AM on 09/12/2011

The folks who did the study understand any stats out of Cuba need to be taken with a heavy grain of salt right? They've got the old Soviet Potemkin village thing down pat. Ditto China if they'd made it on the list.

[mataylor16]

05:03 PM on 09/12/2011

And why would they lie at this point? Because Khrushchev would have liked it that way?

[BigWillyG]

05:45 PM on 09/12/2011

I generally distrust any data coming from non-democratic countries. We've got 50 years of fabricating data so why not keep going. The Soviet sugar daddy is gone but it's still a great way to make the US look bad and show how much of a failure the embargo has been.

[Oceras]

12:38 PM on 09/18/2011

China's not on the list (it's #71), so saying what would be the circumstance if it were is absurd. May I remind you that Cuba is a desperately poor nation that still beats out the US on health care. I don't know about Uzbekistan or Belarus, but the rest of the countries on the list all practice socialized medicine. Our health care system has been going downhill while those countries' hasn't. This should tell you something about what works and what doesn't.

[brutha]

08:41 AM on 09/12/2011

It's also worth mentioning that most if not all of these countries have universal healthcare and you don't have to pay anything extra to have your child treated.

[goingstrong]

11:17 PM on 09/11/2011

Uzbekistan??

[Oceras]

12:39 PM on 09/18/2011

Go figure. The US is 15th. Kazakhstan is 16th by a hair.

[Nofsdad]

12:04 PM on 09/11/2011

This whole methodology is a sham. We may HAVE 123 heath workers for every 10K people but that doesn't mean they're going to be treating you if you're elderly, poor or indigent and don't have private insurance.

I'm supposed to see a cardiologist for a whole battery of tests every six months because a major heart defect but it's been over three years now since I saw one because all the cardiologists in my area decided to stop treating Medicare patients because they say the reimbursements don't cover their costs.

Obviously, what they mean is that the time to provide definitive treatment to a poor person could be used to make more money by treating someone with the ability to pay more but whatever, just having 123 "medical professionals" available doesn't mean more than 4 or 5 of them are available to people like me.

Most health care providers these days either work for corporations or are corporations unto themselves and corporations do NOT provide health care to people who can't pay their fees if they can possibly avoid it.

[beyondliberal]

04:26 PM on 09/10/2011

And yet, Americans still say we have the best healthcare in the world.
And yet, Americans still say socialized medicine is bad.
And yet, Americans still believe in American Exceptionalism.
Americans are delusional.

[mataylor16]

05:04 PM on 09/12/2011

We're just told that so much, some people actually even believe it.

[JHKH]

03:38 PM on 09/10/2011

This, coupled with the infant mortality rankings that recently came out, should help Americans come to the realization that we are not "#1" at much of anything anymore, except our military might. Once we face the facts and decide to do something important, beside make war, we could actually do something to positively affect these social indices of our country's (people's) well-being. Our measure of our wealth and success is based on a completely erroneous standard. Our economic system can find no way to make money at peace, and therefore, we don't have it. Until we decide to measure our wealth in terms other than money, we will continue to make the wrong decision when allocating resources, because business can never justify investing in long-term projects if it compromises next quarter's P&L.

[Oceras]

12:43 PM on 09/18/2011

"Our measure of our wealth and success is based on a completely erroneous standard."
I would modify this to say, 'our measure of success, which is wealth, is cockeyed.'

[Paul Finley]

10:00 AM on 09/10/2011

Great observation (but) possibly the wrong conclusion, the land is the key, not the country chosen the best for children was also the very place many were destroyed at a tender age by a loving and caring people as the world perceived existed in 1939. Christianity is the largest religion in Germany with 54,765,265 (67.07%) adherents as of the end of 2006( but before World War II, about two-thirds of the German population was Protestant and one-third was Roman Catholic.(Bevölkerung und Kirchenzugehörigkeit nach Bundesländern Table 1.1 ) All might appear well but two conclusion could possible also exists where death reigned for so many of GOD's chosen people; one is Jeremiah 31:15 This is what the LORD says: "A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more." and Psalm 127 “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain.” A form of religion but not the power thereof is as vain as that of 1939 Luke 13:3 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. If the gospel is hidden, it is hidden to those who are perishing.

[Maggie Keavey Kozel]

09:18 AM on 09/10/2011

Although there may be some relevant information in the study about US healthcare, the author does not make it available, and we are left to guess why the US ranks 15th, especially since, according to the criteria for ranking, as reported here, the US has 5 times the optimal recommended number of healthcare providers. So how to explain the disconnect? Does having fewer excess numbers of providers than Switzerland mean we are not providing as good care? That seems like a leap. Or were their other factors? This was a very superficial handling of a very serious subject. I feel like I was reading USA Today, only without pretty pie charts.

[Oceras]

12:47 PM on 09/18/2011

Distribution of health care and accessibility play major roles. The US healthcare system is a hodgepodge of rules and regulations, and it is not equally accessible (geographically and economically) throughout the nation.

[Halsey]

12:48 AM on 09/10/2011

So much for a legacy. My gawd, Uzbekistan (yes yes spelling off, I never know where to put the "h"), is on the list but not the fabulous US of A. The rest on the short list did not surprise me; their health systems are pretty much not for profit and certainly not for HUGE profit at the cost of lives. All one has to do is look at how much private health insurance companies stock went up AFTER Obamacare was enacted (yet to really happen and may be quashed by amerikaners who still have commies under their beds just waiting to pounce).

Our stat shows only 16 more healthcare workers per 10,000 than friggin Somalia? Hello? Anybody paying attention? Universal care...start paying in when you start working..ergo, self funding. (LBJ's plan for Medicare before Viet Nam consumed his Great Society. Sound familiar?

Let's remember the definition of insanity: you know....doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome.

I dont' even have children and this makes me so ashamed.

[joyf1]

08:26 PM on 09/10/2011

This makes me so sad, and I, too, am childless.

[nogimmicks]

07:12 PM on 09/09/2011

A good comparison for the quality ranking would be with the dollars spent on healthcare of 1 person in each country. Look at the annual healcare costs in thousand dollars per capita in different countries and compare with Germany or Switzerland (Cuba and Uzbekistan are not even on the list):

US 5.7
Aus 2.9
Canada 3.0
Denmark 2.7
Finland: 2.1
France 3.0
Germany 3.0
Iceland 3.2
Ireland 2.5
Japan 2.2
Sweden 2.7
Switzerland 3.8
UK 2.3

The difference between the money actually needed for an excellent care and money for extorted from people as minimal 'insurance' is simply stolen by the insurance companies, lawyers and their insurances, hospitals and other inefficient corporations.

The Obama law did nothing about this discrepancy, tort reform or about creating a competition, but instead is trying to force more people to contribute at ever growing rates.

[Oceras]

12:51 PM on 09/18/2011

Health Care Reform is just a first step. It was all that could be accomplished in a congress that was not veto-proof (Republicans + Blue Dog Democrats). Your last statement needs some data to back it up.

[rpegram316]

04:47 PM on 09/09/2011

The US is ranked number 15, just ahead of Kazakhstan by a tenth of a percentage point.

[ProgressivePicon86]

05:56 AM on 09/09/2011

America = not even on the list. FAIL.

[muysuave41]

03:08 AM on 09/09/2011

That is certainly good to know.