Although I understood the current state of Afghanistan, I did not realize the terrible position the health care is in. The number one cause of death is because of perinatal care or during/around the time of delivery. This is very interesting because in first world countries this is probably near the bottom of the list. Practices that are common in the US are deadly in Afghanistan because of things like lack of infrastructure and medical instruments, infection/sterilization, lack of doctors/nurses, limited medical coverage etc.
Also I thought it was very interesting that the US spends 2.7 trillion more dollars on health care than Afghanistan. That is an insane amount of money and it makes sense why their health care system is so bad.
Hearing about all of the information from Afghanistan, I am not very surprised. I would have pictured this country having a very poor health care system since they do not even have an effective government. It is sad that people are living this way. But, I think nothing is going to change until they have some sort of stable government that will provide the education needed to know the importance of sanitation and sterilization.
It sounds like Afghanistan is similar to Iraq. Due to the past years of war and dictatorships have turned their health care system into disrepair. In fact the system has been affected so much that some scholars believe that it has been set back 50 years. Some have speculated that during the regime of Saddam Hussein cut public health spending by 90 percent. And similar to Afghanistan, they discuss how the mass exodus of healthcare professionals, limited access to medical information and a declining standard of living has been the main issue in Iraq as well.
Yeah it definitely seems that a stable government has a direct correlation with the efficiency of the healthcare. Iraq and Afghanistan are both in similar situations with their political position in the world, so it is not surprising to see both their healthcare systems in similar situations.
I was really surprised that Mexico's healthcare system is not as bad off as I originally thought. When I thought of Mexican hospitals, I remember hearing horror stories about how bad and incompetent their doctors and conditions were. The research I did on Mexican healthcare showed the complete opposite. In every major city, there is a large well-staffed and stocked hospital. Many of the doctors in these hospitals have had training in the US. The only major problem is the lack of quality health services in areas between these cities.
I was shocked that a top three cause of death in Iran was traffic accidents and of the number of maternal deaths during birth in Afghanistan. I thought it was very interesting how a country's beliefs could influence health so drastically. As in Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern countries where women are oppressed, they lack education and cannot see male doctors for delivering a baby, so that results in high maternal death rates. That was something I didn't even consider as possible.
Mike I was also surprised to hear that Mexico had a successful Health Care system as well. I have heard the many horror stories about the hospitals there, but in reality it is no where near as bad as they are made out to be. I found it interesting that the top hospitals have doctors that were educated in the United States.
I was also very surprised when you said that Mexico had a pretty good healthcare system. For some reason I always had this perception that the jails and hospitals were just filled with disease and death. This could be a good example how the media can have a negative impact on society. The media puts out all the terrible stories of things that have happened in Mexico without talking about the positives like the healthcare system and it gives them a bad image.
I always thought that mexico had a terrible healthcare system to, but to find out that they actually have a well-established hospital with a full staff of doctors on call in every major city i amazing news. Now if they could improve the health care in between these major cities as Michael said i significant increase in the overall health of everyone in the country should be seen. Also i cant believe that beliefs influence how the healthcare is run in Iran. What surprised me is that women can not see a male doctor for checkups so they must see a female doctor and since most females do not receive proper educations the logic behind the way they run things is seriously flawed. Some drastic changes need to be made to help decrease the maternal death rates in that country.
I agree with what everyone has said above, you always here of all the bad things that are going on in Mexico between poverty, problems at the border, gang violence, and the drug cartel. I was completely shocked when I saw how successful their health care system was.
Mexico was also the big surprise for me as well in this assignment. Looking at Iraq and Iran, it seems like poor government and social conditions lead to poor healthcare, but Mexico definitely breaks the trend there. Like Erik said, the media always tends to report the negatives and ignore the positives. People say that not watching the news for a few days can help feelings of depression, I can see that here.
I was honestly surprised about Cuba's Healthcare system. I had no idea that everyone is citizen is covered. I was also surprised to find out that for every 200 citizens they have one doctor. I found somewhere ( can't remember where not) that the United states for every 400 citizens is 1 doctor. This surprised me because i've always thought we have so many doctors. Guess we don't have as much as Cuba.
I think one reason we have a common misconception about Cuba is due to the embargo we placed on them back in the 1960s. Whenever we see video clips or pictures of Cuba we see them in old shabby cars and automatically think they live a terrible lowly lifestyle. I think we Americans, who are so used to luxury automatically think countries with less material goods than we have will by default have worse healthcare, etc. I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to this. Seeing the results of Health Care Elsewhere has really opened my eyes, as again seen by your statistic of 200 citizens per 1 doctor in Cuba.
I think Michael has a great point with regards to our views of countries with less material wealth. I was also surprised to see that everyone in Cuba is covered. For the ratio of citizens to doctors, however, I am interested to see how much of that is due to an overall smaller population than the U.S. It's hard to compare these sorts of data because of factors like this, but overall I'm still impressed with the state of healthcare in Cuba.
I am going to agree with Heather when i read that Cuba covers all of its citizens i was surprised. 200 citizens for everyone doctor is well balanced for a a country of that size. Michael makes a great point Cuba's economy has improved significantly we should not take a country by what we see until we experience it for ourselves.
I had China as my country and I was surprised by a lot of the information that I found. I saw that most people go to the hospitals because they do not trust the primary doctors that are near them. I was also surprised that most of the people in China have access to clean water (91%) and that 95% are covered by insurance. Only citizens can be covered and those people who live in China who are not citizens go to "black clinics" which are clinics that will see anyone but are not trustworthy or respected at all. But if that is all the medical access someone has, it is better than nothing. The government is trying to get rid of these clinics and really focus their attention on primary doctors.
I think it is really surprising to hear about a country where most of the medical practices are not trusted by the citizens. That is so odd considering how our society views doctors, as community leaders that deserve our respect and trust. I wonder what Chinese doctors did to earn this distrust. I think this illustrates the importance of informed consent and following HIPAA privacy rules. If doctors and other healthcare professionals started ignoring these standards, that would quickly earn them the distrust of the populace.
When I was doing the research, most of the mistrust came from doctors giving wrong diagnosis and not treating them properly. I find it interesting that a well developed country has so much problems with their health care. It is something you would expect from a country without a stable government. But, in recent years the government is trying to force those doctors out of practice and establish doctors that are more reliable and trustworthy.
Do you know if these misdiagnoses were largely due to the doctors being improperly trained? That would definitely be a good reason for mistrust. Again it is bizarre to think about doctors being wrong on a regular basis like China had a problem with. Almost all people in the USA trust the doctor's word as fact, as they have proven to be highly accurate with their diagnoses. Hopefully China can implement a new generation of better trained, more trustworthy doctors, allowing citizens to again put their trust in healthcare professionals.
After doing research on the health care system in Iran I was rather surprised by a couple different things. First was the fact the third leading cause of death was traffic accidents. I must admit that I do not know a large amount of information on the country as a whole, but if I had to guess the top causes of death, traffic accidents would be pretty far down on my list. Secondly, another thing that surprised me was the fact that Iran is part of the "health care tourism" phenomenon. People choose to come to Iran to receive medical treatment. This really surprised me because Iran is not a place I would imagine someone to choose to go have medical treatments performed, but their private sector of the health care system is very modern, and a desirable place to be treated.
For Me, it would have to be how new the entire system is. El Salvador has only had their system for about 4 years. Before 2009, they had private healthcare that few could afford, and it was low quality, and only 50% of the country had any access to healthcare at all. With a newly elected president, infant and maternal mortality rate has plummeted, healthcare is 100% free and available to 86% of the people.
I think El Salvador has done greatness in supplying health care to 86% of its residents. In only four years the major transition occurred that went from a private system to a more national system. The United States can take a lot of information from El Salvador and put it to practice here. I wonder how much the switch affected those companies who provided the private health care?
It did not really surprise me, but I also had never really thought about the true disparity that countries spend on health care for their citizens. If you think about it, it makes sense considering the similar disparity of GDP and poverty rates, but the fact is still startling. Especially when you consider the Scandinavian countries who were approximately $4,000 per capita compared to other countries with much less than even $100 per capita.
Sweden seems to best exemplify how to promote good health for its citizens. With extremely low infant and maternal mortality rates and low obesity rates, the people of Sweden live longer than just about anyone in the world. That being said, I certainly expected that Sweden would be spending an astronomical amount of money per capita towards healthcare. While the $4,000 per capita put towards healthcare is large compared to developing countries, this value falls near the middle of the per capita spending of other European nations. Meanwhile it is much lower than America's per capita spending of approximately $7,500 and that still leaves 30 million people uninsured. I was simply amazed that Sweden could spend so much less of their money toward healthcare and still have a far more healthy population than the U.S.
Coincidentally, we are talking about healthcare in my senior theology class as well and it is just mind blowing and disheartening to learn the types of situations that people live in and just how truly grateful we all should be. Learning the amount of money, or the lack there of, that countries like Afghanistan spend on healthcare and countries like Kenya, around six dollars a person is crazy seeing that majority of us will go out and spend seven bucks on a chipotle burrito and not even think twice about it. I found out in theology class that there is a civilization of 75,000 people that live on an island of garbage. Literally, an entire block of land is used for dumping garbage and there are people who have built shacks at the bottom of this mountain and live there. By day the scavenge the trash looking for food, materials for clothing and anything that they can use as everyday, household activities. There are explosions, avalanches of trash, anything that you can think of happen to these people and they die if unbelievable ways. The fact that people actually have to live like this puts things in a whole new perspective for me and shows me how blessed we truly are for having the opportunity to better our lives with a college education. The name of the place is city of Payatas, everyone should look and see just how fortunate we truly are.
I really think you make a great point Antonio. The amount of money spent per person on healthcare in places like Kenya truly demonstrates the disparity of wealth in the world. I spend more on groceries in a week than an entire family receives in healthcare in a year in Kenya. That is truly mind-blowing. It's so easy to comment on how bad of shape America's healthcare system is, but just about all of us still receive a much higher quality of medical care than that of developing countries. I would like to see some change in America's healthcare system, but even more I would like to see the gap between the wealthy and the poor made smaller after seeing some of the data people have dug up on countries around the world.
I found the publically funded healthcare system to be very suprising in Canada. I have heard in the past that their system was public, but I never understood how it worked. It would be nice to allow every legal resident to have healthcare in the United States, like Canada does and you would think this would be what every country would choose. Although it sounds like the best way since everyone is covered, it is not good when there is only 1.9 physicians for every 1,000 people in Canada and 3.2 beds for every 1,000. I also, would not want to be put on a wait list to get a life to get a needed surgery. Looking at how Canada's healthcare is shaped I agree more with the private healthcare system, but I do not agree that they are allowed to drop you from there system.
I was surprised by how much Brazil's health care system is compared to the U.S.'s. They are compared a lot because of the size and distribution of their country, but in reality they are way different. Brazil spends 22 billion dollars per year on 200 million people. The U.S. spends 670 billion dollars per year on 300 million people. It was surprising that they are compared so much, but they are that much different.
I wonder what the quality of health care is in Brazil compared to the US. With that much of a difference between the two, you would assume that the US would have a far better quality of heath care than Brazil. This can be seen by the lower life expectancy in Brazil (Females=73 and Males=66) as compared to the US, which has an average expectancy of 78.49%. Another indicator is the amount of neonatal and maternal death rates as compared to the US(10 per 1000/160 per 100,000 and 6 per every 1,000/21 per 100,000 respectively). An alternative explanation for the discrepancy (part of the $670 billion that the US spends) could also be tied up in the bureaucracy of the system in the US with a lot of its imperfections. If you found anything about the quality and conditions of the actual care in Brazil, I would really be interested in hearing about them.
I'm not sure who had India but I just saw a show on NatGeo the other night about scams and in this episode, they were looking into the doctor scams in India. They found out that there are thousands of fake doctors who will over prescibe medication and the medication that they give may not be safe. They said that there were over 45,000 fake doctors practicing in the streets. The host of the show went to one of these "doctors" and the first thing he wanted to do was to give the host an injection of an unkown substance and gave him multiple pills. He went on to show how corrupt India's system can be concerning insurance. I don't really understand how it works but the host went to an actual doctor and paid him a good amount of money to have the doctor put in his records that the host was hospitalized for a day and had such and such disease or problem. From what I understand, this means that the host could make a higher insurance claim and get more money from the insurance company. They even gave him a contact for someone who could make him a death certificate so he could further scam his insurance company. I just thought this was really interesting and pretty relatable to what we are talking about here.
That is astonishing that there are so many fake doctors in India something needs to be done about that. The fact that they are prescribing drugs and do not know the effects they could have drastic side affects. The fact someone can make illegal death certificate in order to gain a higher amount of money is just wrong in itself but this does occur in the US sometimes.
It really surprised me that there were so many. There are also many people and "doctors" sell herbal medicines and again, many of the herbs are not safe. My boyfriend has been to India multiple times and after watching this show, he told me about how once a man sold some kind of herb to his dad to give to his grandfather. His Aunt suggested that they take it to a chemist to check it out first and make sure it was safe. The herb turned out to some kind of poison and if they didn't get it checked out his grandfather probably would have died. I just can't wrap my head around why there are so many people doing these kinds of things. I understand it's for the money but still, there are people sell poison saying it is a healing herb! That's so not cool! I don't know much about India's healthcare or legal system to be able to say how they might fix problems like this but something does need to be done.
I think this really demonstrates the differences between Western and Eastern Medicine. Much of Eastern Medicine is based around cultural beliefs and tradition. Because of that, much of their medicine is based around herbal remedies and sometimes procedures that we would consider taboo. Some would swear up and down that aspects of this type of medicine works although I'm not sure how much actual scientific proof there is behind it. Therefore, it may also be important to consider not only how a nation's healthcare system works but also how is medicine practiced in these areas.
I had the country of South Africa and I expected it to be fairly poor simply due to the stereotype of it being an African Country. What I found though was that the country has been undergoing health care and medical reform since the 1990s due to a recent change in government. They are slowly, but positively progressing in almost all areas, but still have a very long way to go. South Africa is still very poor and health care is unaffordable by almost 80% of the population. Their final goal of the reform is to for everyone to not just have access to health care but for every individual in the country to have health care. Some other important facts that I found about South Africa is that malaria is not common at all, I guess cause it is farther south. Even though it is not their leading cause of death their biggest health problem that they have in South Africa is tuberculosis. Another shocking negative health fact is that HIV has greatly increased due to unprotected intercorse as well as not having the supplies to treat HIV or prevent it (same as TB). The final fact that I found and wish to share is probably the one that hit me most was that South Africa has many hospitals and clinics all over the country, their medical technology maybe lacking, but what they really lack is doctors. 1 of every 7000 people becomes a doctor. They simply don't have enough doctors due to the shortage to treat all of the sick in the country. They have recently formed agreements with countries like Cuba where they send doctors over to help treat all the people and in return, South Africa gives them a job.
Strife between the rich and poor has been a part of South Africa's history for a long time, which is unfortunate. Hopefully they can create a healthcare system that can better care for the under privileged and through education and screen decrease the HIV transmission rate. That is an interesting solution they have created for a shortage of doctors, importing foreign doctors. It is good to see they are taking steps in the right direction in this area.
After researching Germany's health care system and talking to my brother-in-law and sister who have lived in Germany for the last 4 years I would say the most surprising thing I learned was how well run their system is. The people in Germany are not complaining about the system like they are in America. I think this is in part that Germany has the longest running healthcare system so they have had a longer time to fix problems.
I had the country of Argentina. I was surprised that compared to an average stay in an American hospital which is about 4000 dollars. Argentina only charges about 400 dollars a day to stay in the hospital. Overall i expected a country like Argentina to have somewhat decent health care, but to my surprise they have universal healthcare for everyone and have 1 doctor for about every 200 patients.
I found Norway interesting in that it was an example of a universal health care system working efficiently. I was skeptical of the concept due to the hashed together nature of our own system, and the media coverage on the recent implementation of "Obama care" in which the US is trying to provide a semblance of universal health care to its citizens. If we had established a system such as Norway's in the beginning, the problems observed with private insurance in this country may not have become a factor. Unfortunately a complete overhaul of the system is impractical, maybe even impossible. Norway is a relatively rich state and over 9.5% of its GDP is spent on health care ( $5,352 per capita). In contrast, the US is spending more of its GDP on healthcare, at a rate of 17.9%, to less effective results. Hopefully the US will be able to begin to work through the complex mess of our own health care system and find new inventive ways to insure all people have access to adequate health care.
I was very surprise on Israel's healthcare system. Israel's economy is currently in a crisis with poverty being around 20 percent. Thus, i expected their health care system to collapse or be uneffective. However, this is the opposite. Israel has one of the best doctor to citizen ratios in the world. This has got so much attention that recent articles are being published in the United States to try and adopt their health care system. It is truly remarkable the amount of emphasis Israel places on health care even though money is so scarce.
Egypt has public health care provided by the government and they also have private health care. Even though their public health care is free, about 60% of primary health care visits are made at private clinics and hospitals. I thought this was interesting because it shows how the people do not trust their governments health care system. I also found out that around 80% of Egyptian women undergo female genital mutilation and that Egypt does not have laws against this practice. This really surprised me because that is a huge percentage of Egyptian women. I think that because we don't see or hear a lot of that here in the US, I have never thought about how prevelant genital mutilation is throughout African and Middle Eastern countries; it is a completely different part of the culture that a lot of people, who are not from that culture,have a hard time realizing that it really happens (unfortunately).
I knew that Costa Rica had a fairly strong economy thanks to a thriving tourism sector, but I had no idea that its healthcare system was as strong as it was. Its public healthcare system is universal for all legal citizens and costs a fraction of the average in the United States. Some procedures, such as a heart surgery, cost tens of thousands less! It was alsosurprising to see how many other countries around the world also have universal healthcare systems. Not everything was great about Costa Rica's healthcare system, however. There has recently been a growing strain put on it as the general population ages, and private healthcare in the country is much more expensive than the public system. Overall, this was a good learning opportunity that gave me a glimpse into how other countries' healthcare systems are run in comparison to the U.S.
The thing that surprised me most about Japan was that many Japanese practitioners are not very highly recommended because in Japan they do not teach bedside manner or ethics to them. Which seems very odd to me. That is the core fundamental teaching in nursing school and for doctors. Also the idea that they have health care for all citizens and foreigners as well. I feel that this project really shed light on the different countries and how each have a different way of care and health care systems.
The most interesting thing I found about my country was that it only spent $6 on health care for each person. That's ridiculous considering that Switzerland spends thousands of dollars on each person.
I agree, $6 dollars is such a low amount of money to spend on healthcare per person. I can't even fathom the type of care these people receive, if any care at all. Things we take for granted each day amount for more money than some people receive on healthcare. To put it in perspective, we spend $7 on a burrito at chipotle and don't even think twice about swiping our credit card for it. We spend more on food at one sit down than some people receive for healthcare for an entire year.
Although I understood the current state of Afghanistan, I did not realize the terrible position the health care is in. The number one cause of death is because of perinatal care or during/around the time of delivery. This is very interesting because in first world countries this is probably near the bottom of the list. Practices that are common in the US are deadly in Afghanistan because of things like lack of infrastructure and medical instruments, infection/sterilization, lack of doctors/nurses, limited medical coverage etc.
ReplyDeleteAlso I thought it was very interesting that the US spends 2.7 trillion more dollars on health care than Afghanistan. That is an insane amount of money and it makes sense why their health care system is so bad.
Hearing about all of the information from Afghanistan, I am not very surprised. I would have pictured this country having a very poor health care system since they do not even have an effective government. It is sad that people are living this way. But, I think nothing is going to change until they have some sort of stable government that will provide the education needed to know the importance of sanitation and sterilization.
DeleteIt sounds like Afghanistan is similar to Iraq. Due to the past years of war and dictatorships have turned their health care system into disrepair. In fact the system has been affected so much that some scholars believe that it has been set back 50 years. Some have speculated that during the regime of Saddam Hussein cut public health spending by 90 percent. And similar to Afghanistan, they discuss how the mass exodus of healthcare professionals, limited access to medical information and a declining standard of living has been the main issue in Iraq as well.
DeleteYeah it definitely seems that a stable government has a direct correlation with the efficiency of the healthcare. Iraq and Afghanistan are both in similar situations with their political position in the world, so it is not surprising to see both their healthcare systems in similar situations.
DeleteI was really surprised that Mexico's healthcare system is not as bad off as I originally thought. When I thought of Mexican hospitals, I remember hearing horror stories about how bad and incompetent their doctors and conditions were. The research I did on Mexican healthcare showed the complete opposite. In every major city, there is a large well-staffed and stocked hospital. Many of the doctors in these hospitals have had training in the US. The only major problem is the lack of quality health services in areas between these cities.
ReplyDeleteI was shocked that a top three cause of death in Iran was traffic accidents and of the number of maternal deaths during birth in Afghanistan. I thought it was very interesting how a country's beliefs could influence health so drastically. As in Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern countries where women are oppressed, they lack education and cannot see male doctors for delivering a baby, so that results in high maternal death rates. That was something I didn't even consider as possible.
Mike I was also surprised to hear that Mexico had a successful Health Care system as well. I have heard the many horror stories about the hospitals there, but in reality it is no where near as bad as they are made out to be. I found it interesting that the top hospitals have doctors that were educated in the United States.
DeleteI was also very surprised when you said that Mexico had a pretty good healthcare system. For some reason I always had this perception that the jails and hospitals were just filled with disease and death. This could be a good example how the media can have a negative impact on society. The media puts out all the terrible stories of things that have happened in Mexico without talking about the positives like the healthcare system and it gives them a bad image.
DeleteI always thought that mexico had a terrible healthcare system to, but to find out that they actually have a well-established hospital with a full staff of doctors on call in every major city i amazing news. Now if they could improve the health care in between these major cities as Michael said i significant increase in the overall health of everyone in the country should be seen. Also i cant believe that beliefs influence how the healthcare is run in Iran. What surprised me is that women can not see a male doctor for checkups so they must see a female doctor and since most females do not receive proper educations the logic behind the way they run things is seriously flawed. Some drastic changes need to be made to help decrease the maternal death rates in that country.
DeleteI agree with what everyone has said above, you always here of all the bad things that are going on in Mexico between poverty, problems at the border, gang violence, and the drug cartel. I was completely shocked when I saw how successful their health care system was.
DeleteMexico was also the big surprise for me as well in this assignment. Looking at Iraq and Iran, it seems like poor government and social conditions lead to poor healthcare, but Mexico definitely breaks the trend there. Like Erik said, the media always tends to report the negatives and ignore the positives. People say that not watching the news for a few days can help feelings of depression, I can see that here.
DeleteI was honestly surprised about Cuba's Healthcare system. I had no idea that everyone is citizen is covered. I was also surprised to find out that for every 200 citizens they have one doctor. I found somewhere ( can't remember where not) that the United states for every 400 citizens is 1 doctor. This surprised me because i've always thought we have so many doctors. Guess we don't have as much as Cuba.
ReplyDeleteI think one reason we have a common misconception about Cuba is due to the embargo we placed on them back in the 1960s. Whenever we see video clips or pictures of Cuba we see them in old shabby cars and automatically think they live a terrible lowly lifestyle. I think we Americans, who are so used to luxury automatically think countries with less material goods than we have will by default have worse healthcare, etc. I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to this. Seeing the results of Health Care Elsewhere has really opened my eyes, as again seen by your statistic of 200 citizens per 1 doctor in Cuba.
DeleteI think Michael has a great point with regards to our views of countries with less material wealth. I was also surprised to see that everyone in Cuba is covered. For the ratio of citizens to doctors, however, I am interested to see how much of that is due to an overall smaller population than the U.S. It's hard to compare these sorts of data because of factors like this, but overall I'm still impressed with the state of healthcare in Cuba.
DeleteI am going to agree with Heather when i read that Cuba covers all of its citizens i was surprised. 200 citizens for everyone doctor is well balanced for a a country of that size. Michael makes a great point Cuba's economy has improved significantly we should not take a country by what we see until we experience it for ourselves.
DeleteI had China as my country and I was surprised by a lot of the information that I found. I saw that most people go to the hospitals because they do not trust the primary doctors that are near them. I was also surprised that most of the people in China have access to clean water (91%) and that 95% are covered by insurance. Only citizens can be covered and those people who live in China who are not citizens go to "black clinics" which are clinics that will see anyone but are not trustworthy or respected at all. But if that is all the medical access someone has, it is better than nothing. The government is trying to get rid of these clinics and really focus their attention on primary doctors.
ReplyDeleteI think it is really surprising to hear about a country where most of the medical practices are not trusted by the citizens. That is so odd considering how our society views doctors, as community leaders that deserve our respect and trust. I wonder what Chinese doctors did to earn this distrust. I think this illustrates the importance of informed consent and following HIPAA privacy rules. If doctors and other healthcare professionals started ignoring these standards, that would quickly earn them the distrust of the populace.
DeleteWhen I was doing the research, most of the mistrust came from doctors giving wrong diagnosis and not treating them properly. I find it interesting that a well developed country has so much problems with their health care. It is something you would expect from a country without a stable government. But, in recent years the government is trying to force those doctors out of practice and establish doctors that are more reliable and trustworthy.
DeleteDo you know if these misdiagnoses were largely due to the doctors being improperly trained? That would definitely be a good reason for mistrust. Again it is bizarre to think about doctors being wrong on a regular basis like China had a problem with. Almost all people in the USA trust the doctor's word as fact, as they have proven to be highly accurate with their diagnoses. Hopefully China can implement a new generation of better trained, more trustworthy doctors, allowing citizens to again put their trust in healthcare professionals.
DeleteAfter doing research on the health care system in Iran I was rather surprised by a couple different things. First was the fact the third leading cause of death was traffic accidents. I must admit that I do not know a large amount of information on the country as a whole, but if I had to guess the top causes of death, traffic accidents would be pretty far down on my list. Secondly, another thing that surprised me was the fact that Iran is part of the "health care tourism" phenomenon. People choose to come to Iran to receive medical treatment. This really surprised me because Iran is not a place I would imagine someone to choose to go have medical treatments performed, but their private sector of the health care system is very modern, and a desirable place to be treated.
ReplyDeleteFor Me, it would have to be how new the entire system is.
ReplyDeleteEl Salvador has only had their system for about 4 years. Before 2009, they had private healthcare that few could afford, and it was low quality, and only 50% of the country had any access to healthcare at all. With a newly elected president, infant and maternal mortality rate has plummeted, healthcare is 100% free and available to 86% of the people.
I think El Salvador has done greatness in supplying health care to 86% of its residents. In only four years the major transition occurred that went from a private system to a more national system. The United States can take a lot of information from El Salvador and put it to practice here. I wonder how much the switch affected those companies who provided the private health care?
DeleteIt did not really surprise me, but I also had never really thought about the true disparity that countries spend on health care for their citizens. If you think about it, it makes sense considering the similar disparity of GDP and poverty rates, but the fact is still startling. Especially when you consider the Scandinavian countries who were approximately $4,000 per capita compared to other countries with much less than even $100 per capita.
ReplyDeleteSweden seems to best exemplify how to promote good health for its citizens. With extremely low infant and maternal mortality rates and low obesity rates, the people of Sweden live longer than just about anyone in the world. That being said, I certainly expected that Sweden would be spending an astronomical amount of money per capita towards healthcare. While the $4,000 per capita put towards healthcare is large compared to developing countries, this value falls near the middle of the per capita spending of other European nations. Meanwhile it is much lower than America's per capita spending of approximately $7,500 and that still leaves 30 million people uninsured. I was simply amazed that Sweden could spend so much less of their money toward healthcare and still have a far more healthy population than the U.S.
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, we are talking about healthcare in my senior theology class as well and it is just mind blowing and disheartening to learn the types of situations that people live in and just how truly grateful we all should be. Learning the amount of money, or the lack there of, that countries like Afghanistan spend on healthcare and countries like Kenya, around six dollars a person is crazy seeing that majority of us will go out and spend seven bucks on a chipotle burrito and not even think twice about it. I found out in theology class that there is a civilization of 75,000 people that live on an island of garbage. Literally, an entire block of land is used for dumping garbage and there are people who have built shacks at the bottom of this mountain and live there. By day the scavenge the trash looking for food, materials for clothing and anything that they can use as everyday, household activities. There are explosions, avalanches of trash, anything that you can think of happen to these people and they die if unbelievable ways. The fact that people actually have to live like this puts things in a whole new perspective for me and shows me how blessed we truly are for having the opportunity to better our lives with a college education. The name of the place is city of Payatas, everyone should look and see just how fortunate we truly are.
ReplyDeleteI really think you make a great point Antonio. The amount of money spent per person on healthcare in places like Kenya truly demonstrates the disparity of wealth in the world. I spend more on groceries in a week than an entire family receives in healthcare in a year in Kenya. That is truly mind-blowing. It's so easy to comment on how bad of shape America's healthcare system is, but just about all of us still receive a much higher quality of medical care than that of developing countries. I would like to see some change in America's healthcare system, but even more I would like to see the gap between the wealthy and the poor made smaller after seeing some of the data people have dug up on countries around the world.
DeleteI found the publically funded healthcare system to be very suprising in Canada. I have heard in the past that their system was public, but I never understood how it worked. It would be nice to allow every legal resident to have healthcare in the United States, like Canada does and you would think this would be what every country would choose. Although it sounds like the best way since everyone is covered, it is not good when there is only 1.9 physicians for every 1,000 people in Canada and 3.2 beds for every 1,000. I also, would not want to be put on a wait list to get a life to get a needed surgery. Looking at how Canada's healthcare is shaped I agree more with the private healthcare system, but I do not agree that they are allowed to drop you from there system.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised by how much Brazil's health care system is compared to the U.S.'s. They are compared a lot because of the size and distribution of their country, but in reality they are way different. Brazil spends 22 billion dollars per year on 200 million people. The U.S. spends 670 billion dollars per year on 300 million people. It was surprising that they are compared so much, but they are that much different.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the quality of health care is in Brazil compared to the US. With that much of a difference between the two, you would assume that the US would have a far better quality of heath care than Brazil. This can be seen by the lower life expectancy in Brazil (Females=73 and Males=66) as compared to the US, which has an average expectancy of 78.49%. Another indicator is the amount of neonatal and maternal death rates as compared to the US(10 per 1000/160 per 100,000 and 6 per every 1,000/21 per 100,000 respectively). An alternative explanation for the discrepancy (part of the $670 billion that the US spends) could also be tied up in the bureaucracy of the system in the US with a lot of its imperfections. If you found anything about the quality and conditions of the actual care in Brazil, I would really be interested in hearing about them.
DeleteI'm not sure who had India but I just saw a show on NatGeo the other night about scams and in this episode, they were looking into the doctor scams in India. They found out that there are thousands of fake doctors who will over prescibe medication and the medication that they give may not be safe. They said that there were over 45,000 fake doctors practicing in the streets. The host of the show went to one of these "doctors" and the first thing he wanted to do was to give the host an injection of an unkown substance and gave him multiple pills. He went on to show how corrupt India's system can be concerning insurance. I don't really understand how it works but the host went to an actual doctor and paid him a good amount of money to have the doctor put in his records that the host was hospitalized for a day and had such and such disease or problem. From what I understand, this means that the host could make a higher insurance claim and get more money from the insurance company. They even gave him a contact for someone who could make him a death certificate so he could further scam his insurance company.
ReplyDeleteI just thought this was really interesting and pretty relatable to what we are talking about here.
That is astonishing that there are so many fake doctors in India something needs to be done about that. The fact that they are prescribing drugs and do not know the effects they could have drastic side affects. The fact someone can make illegal death certificate in order to gain a higher amount of money is just wrong in itself but this does occur in the US sometimes.
DeleteIt really surprised me that there were so many. There are also many people and "doctors" sell herbal medicines and again, many of the herbs are not safe. My boyfriend has been to India multiple times and after watching this show, he told me about how once a man sold some kind of herb to his dad to give to his grandfather. His Aunt suggested that they take it to a chemist to check it out first and make sure it was safe. The herb turned out to some kind of poison and if they didn't get it checked out his grandfather probably would have died. I just can't wrap my head around why there are so many people doing these kinds of things. I understand it's for the money but still, there are people sell poison saying it is a healing herb! That's so not cool! I don't know much about India's healthcare or legal system to be able to say how they might fix problems like this but something does need to be done.
DeleteI think this really demonstrates the differences between Western and Eastern Medicine. Much of Eastern Medicine is based around cultural beliefs and tradition. Because of that, much of their medicine is based around herbal remedies and sometimes procedures that we would consider taboo. Some would swear up and down that aspects of this type of medicine works although I'm not sure how much actual scientific proof there is behind it. Therefore, it may also be important to consider not only how a nation's healthcare system works but also how is medicine practiced in these areas.
DeleteI had the country of South Africa and I expected it to be fairly poor simply due to the stereotype of it being an African Country. What I found though was that the country has been undergoing health care and medical reform since the 1990s due to a recent change in government. They are slowly, but positively progressing in almost all areas, but still have a very long way to go. South Africa is still very poor and health care is unaffordable by almost 80% of the population. Their final goal of the reform is to for everyone to not just have access to health care but for every individual in the country to have health care. Some other important facts that I found about South Africa is that malaria is not common at all, I guess cause it is farther south. Even though it is not their leading cause of death their biggest health problem that they have in South Africa is tuberculosis. Another shocking negative health fact is that HIV has greatly increased due to unprotected intercorse as well as not having the supplies to treat HIV or prevent it (same as TB). The final fact that I found and wish to share is probably the one that hit me most was that South Africa has many hospitals and clinics all over the country, their medical technology maybe lacking, but what they really lack is doctors. 1 of every 7000 people becomes a doctor. They simply don't have enough doctors due to the shortage to treat all of the sick in the country. They have recently formed agreements with countries like Cuba where they send doctors over to help treat all the people and in return, South Africa gives them a job.
ReplyDeleteStrife between the rich and poor has been a part of South Africa's history for a long time, which is unfortunate. Hopefully they can create a healthcare system that can better care for the under privileged and through education and screen decrease the HIV transmission rate. That is an interesting solution they have created for a shortage of doctors, importing foreign doctors. It is good to see they are taking steps in the right direction in this area.
DeleteAfter researching Germany's health care system and talking to my brother-in-law and sister who have lived in Germany for the last 4 years I would say the most surprising thing I learned was how well run their system is. The people in Germany are not complaining about the system like they are in America. I think this is in part that Germany has the longest running healthcare system so they have had a longer time to fix problems.
ReplyDeleteI had the country of Argentina. I was surprised that compared to an average stay in an American hospital which is about 4000 dollars. Argentina only charges about 400 dollars a day to stay in the hospital. Overall i expected a country like Argentina to have somewhat decent health care, but to my surprise they have universal healthcare for everyone and have 1 doctor for about every 200 patients.
ReplyDeleteI found Norway interesting in that it was an example of a universal health care system working efficiently. I was skeptical of the concept due to the hashed together nature of our own system, and the media coverage on the recent implementation of "Obama care" in which the US is trying to provide a semblance of universal health care to its citizens. If we had established a system such as Norway's in the beginning, the problems observed with private insurance in this country may not have become a factor. Unfortunately a complete overhaul of the system is impractical, maybe even impossible. Norway is a relatively rich state and over 9.5% of its GDP is spent on health care ( $5,352 per capita). In contrast, the US is spending more of its GDP on healthcare, at a rate of 17.9%, to less effective results. Hopefully the US will be able to begin to work through the complex mess of our own health care system and find new inventive ways to insure all people have access to adequate health care.
ReplyDeleteI was very surprise on Israel's healthcare system. Israel's economy is currently in a crisis with poverty being around 20 percent. Thus, i expected their health care system to collapse or be uneffective. However, this is the opposite. Israel has one of the best doctor to citizen ratios in the world. This has got so much attention that recent articles are being published in the United States to try and adopt their health care system. It is truly remarkable the amount of emphasis Israel places on health care even though money is so scarce.
ReplyDeleteEgypt has public health care provided by the government and they also have private health care. Even though their public health care is free, about 60% of primary health care visits are made at private clinics and hospitals. I thought this was interesting because it shows how the people do not trust their governments health care system. I also found out that around 80% of Egyptian women undergo female genital mutilation and that Egypt does not have laws against this practice. This really surprised me because that is a huge percentage of Egyptian women. I think that because we don't see or hear a lot of that here in the US, I have never thought about how prevelant genital mutilation is throughout African and Middle Eastern countries; it is a completely different part of the culture that a lot of people, who are not from that culture,have a hard time realizing that it really happens (unfortunately).
ReplyDeleteI knew that Costa Rica had a fairly strong economy thanks to a thriving tourism sector, but I had no idea that its healthcare system was as strong as it was. Its public healthcare system is universal for all legal citizens and costs a fraction of the average in the United States. Some procedures, such as a heart surgery, cost tens of thousands less! It was alsosurprising to see how many other countries around the world also have universal healthcare systems. Not everything was great about Costa Rica's healthcare system, however. There has recently been a growing strain put on it as the general population ages, and private healthcare in the country is much more expensive than the public system. Overall, this was a good learning opportunity that gave me a glimpse into how other countries' healthcare systems are run in comparison to the U.S.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that surprised me most about Japan was that many Japanese practitioners are not very highly recommended because in Japan they do not teach bedside manner or ethics to them. Which seems very odd to me. That is the core fundamental teaching in nursing school and for doctors. Also the idea that they have health care for all citizens and foreigners as well. I feel that this project really shed light on the different countries and how each have a different way of care and health care systems.
ReplyDeleteThe most interesting thing I found about my country was that it only spent $6 on health care for each person. That's ridiculous considering that Switzerland spends thousands of dollars on each person.
ReplyDeleteI agree, $6 dollars is such a low amount of money to spend on healthcare per person. I can't even fathom the type of care these people receive, if any care at all. Things we take for granted each day amount for more money than some people receive on healthcare. To put it in perspective, we spend $7 on a burrito at chipotle and don't even think twice about swiping our credit card for it. We spend more on food at one sit down than some people receive for healthcare for an entire year.
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