Reader’s guide
Health at a Glance: Asia/Pacific presents a set of key indicators on health and health systems for 27 Asia-Pacific countries and territories. It builds on the format used in previous editions of Health at a Glance to present comparable data on equity, health status and its determinants, health care resources and utilisation, health expenditure and financing and health care quality.
This publication was prepared jointly by the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia, the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific, the OECD Health Division and the OECD/Korea Policy Centre, under the co-ordination of Luca Lorenzoni from the OECD Health Division.
Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 were prepared by Alberto Marino and Luca Lorenzoni from the OECD Health Division, with support from Jun Gao, Therese Maria Reginaldo and Novee Lor Leyso (WHO/WPRO) and Mark Laundry and Rakesh Mani Rastogi (WHO/SEARO). Chapter 3, Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 were prepared by Frederic Daniel and Luca Lorenzoni from the OECD Health Division, with support from Gaelle Balestat (OECD Health Division), Jun Gao, Therese Maria Reginaldo and Novee Lor Leyso (WHO/WPRO) and Mark Laundry and Rakesh Mani Rastogi (WHO/SEARO). Chapter 6 was prepared by Frederic Daniel and Luca Lorenzoni from the OECD Health Division, with support from Michael Mueller (OECD Health Division) Chandika Indikadahena (WHO Geneva), Annie Chu and Maria Teresa Pena (WHO/WPRO) and Hui Wang and Lluis Vinals Torres (WHO/SEARO). Chapter 7 was prepared by Ian Brownwood, Frederic Daniel, Nicolaas Sieds Klazinga, Yuka Nishina and Luca Lorenzoni (OECD Health Division).
Lucy Hulett (OECD) helped with the formatting and editing of the publication.
Valuable input was received from Britta Monika Baer, Navreet Bhattal, Annie Chu, Peter Cowley, Emmanuel Eraly, Socorro Escalante, Ann-Kira Fortune, Indrajit Hazarika, James Kelley, Warrick Junsuk Kim, Kathleen Lannan, Li Zhao, Priya Mannava, Jonathan Passmore, Roberta Pastore, Kalpeshsinh Rahevar, Hai-rim Shin, Howard Sobel, Ronald Tamangan, Juliawati Untoro, Martin Vandendyck (WHO/WPRO) and Gaetan Lafortune (OECD Health Division).
This publication benefited from the comments and suggestions of Vivian Lin (former Director, Health Systems, WHO/WPRO), Phyllida Travis (Director, Health Systems Development, WHO/SEARO), Ho-Young Maeng (Director General of the OECD/Korea Policy Centre) and Francesca Colombo (Head of OECD Health Division).
Structure of the publication
Health at a Glance: Asia/Pacific 2018 is divided into seven chapters:
-
Chapter 1 Country dashboards shows a set of key indicators to compare performance across countries in each of the following dimensions: health status; risk factors; quality of care and health care resources. For each dimension, a set of 4-5 indicators are presented in the form of country dashboards. The indicators are selected based on their policy relevance, but also on data availability and interpretability. In order to assess comparative performance across countries, each country is classified for every indicator based on how they compare against the income group-specific median.
-
Chapter 2 on Health Inequalities highlights disparities in access to basic health care services. It explores the role of the four most important drivers of inequality – education; rural-urban divide; gender and wealth – in access to antenatal and postnatal care.
-
Chapter 3 on Health status highlights the variations across countries in life expectancy, infant and childhood mortality and major causes of mortality and morbidity, including both communicable and non-communicable diseases.
-
Chapter 4 on Determinants of health focuses on non-medical determinants of health. It features the health of mothers and babies, through family planning issues, low birthweight and breastfeeding. It also includes lifestyle and behavioural indicators such as smoking and alcohol drinking, unhealthy diets, and underweight and overweight, as well as water and sanitation. It also includes an indicator on road safety.
-
Chapter 5 on Health care resources and utilisation reviews some of the inputs, outputs and outcomes of health care systems. This includes the supply of doctors and nurses and hospital beds, as well as the provision of primary and secondary health care services, such as doctor consultations and hospital discharges, as well as a range of services surrounding pregnancy, childbirth and infancy.
-
Chapter 6 on Health expenditure and financing examines trends in health spending across Asia-Pacific countries and territories. It looks at how health services and goods are paid for, and the different mix between public funding, private health insurance, direct out-of-pocket payments by households and external resources. It also looks at pharmaceutical expenditure trends.
-
Chapter 7 on Quality of care builds on the indicators used in the OECD’s Health Care Quality Indicator programme to examine trends in health care quality improvement across Asia-Pacific countries and territories.
Annex B provides some additional tables on the demographic and economic context within which different health systems operate.
Asia-Pacific countries and territories
For this fifth edition of Health at a Glance: Asia/Pacific, 27 regional countries and territories were compared (see Table 1 below): 22 in Asia (Bangladesh; Brunei Darussalam; Cambodia; China; Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; Hong Kong, China; India; Indonesia; Japan; Lao PDR; Macau, China; Malaysia; Mongolia; Myanmar; Nepal; Pakistan; Philippines; Republic of Korea; Singapore; Sri Lanka; Thailand and Viet Nam) and five in the Pacific region (Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands).
Selection and presentation of indicators
The indicators have been selected on the basis of being relevant to monitoring health systems performance, taking into account the availability and comparability of existing data in the Asia-Pacific region. The publication takes advantage of the routine administrative and programme data collected by the World Health Organization, especially the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia and the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific, as well as special country population surveys collecting demographic and health information.
The indicators are presented in the form of easy-to-read figures and explanatory text. Each of the topics covered in this publication is presented over two pages. The first page defines the indicator and notes any significant variations that might affect data comparability. It also provides brief commentary highlighting the key findings conveyed by the data. On the facing page is a set of figures. These typically show current levels of the indicator and, where possible, trends over time. In some cases, an additional figure relating the indicator to another variable is included.
The cut date for all the data reported in this publication is Friday 14 September 2018.
Averages
In text and figures, Asia-Pacific-H refers to the unweighted average for high-income reporting Asia-Pacific countries and territories, Asia-Pacific-UM refers to the unweighted average for upper-middle income reporting Asia-Pacific countries and territories, and Asia Pacific-LM/L refers to the unweighted average for lower-middle and low income reporting Asia-Pacific countries and territories.
“OECD” refers to the unweighted average for the 35 OECD member countries. It includes Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea. Data for OECD countries are generally extracted from OECD sources, unless stated otherwise.