Dear colleagues,
in my classes about global health issues I often use Gapminder tools to visualize macroregional differences. On our last seminar, we talked about two key indicators - life expectancy and income, and how that can be linked together. In Gapminder, countries are devided also according to WB to so called Income groups. I discussed with students, that there are still differences within one income group still, and one example we showed , is a more than 20 years gap difference in life expectancy between countries of Nicaragua and Papua New Guinea. They both belong to Income group No.2, have almost identical GDP/capita income, and still a huge difference in their life expectancy indicator (sse the picture). Does anybody here can share some insights, why it is so? Is there such a difference in health care system of those countries with very similar macroeconomic indicator? I will appreciate any idea realated to that. Thank you!
I don't know these two countries but it is highly unlikely that healthcare systems contribute much to the difference as they don't do much to alter determinants of life span at society level. Individual, group, social and geophysical determinants are likely to be the main sources of difference. Some suggestions for these two countries based on minimal knowledge of the countries:
- social capital and group cohesion
- diet
- substance misuse licit and illicit
- housing and its interaction with climate etc
- pollution
- social inequality
- accidents
- crime
These parameters can be determined relatively easily by comparing performance on these types of variables across the countries concerned.
GDP per capita is not the proxy of life span or even development .
I think the explanation of such gap can be easily found in the rampant levels of crime and violence in PNG, often traditional or at least wide-spread, and large portions of undocumented tribal populations likely not included in the national health statistics.
If you look up under life expectancy, one can get slightly different numbers, but it seems that yours are much too low for Papua NG. Nevertheless, the difference is considerable. I think, it is easy reasons for that (apart from random): population and medical density, fertility together with children mortality etc.
Thank you Andrew William McCulloch and Mario C. Villaverde for your inputs. On our Erasmus+ seminars, I compared with my students some possible indicators, related to most significant ones that you had mentioned. Obviously, most of them were very significantly different to the detriment of PNG. People in PNG smoke a lot and it cuased a lot of death. Another issue is alcohol when driving a car or a bike. I discussed this issue with a deputy of food programme under FAO, who is located in Port Moresby, and he confirmed those data and also mentioned, that tribalism, clan wars and fights caused lots of premature deaths and fatal injuries. An interesting debate came up from that. Thank you for being a part of that.
Thank you Olena Wagner for your input. Yes, I discussed that issue with a deputy for food programme located in Port Moresby, and he confirmed, that crime (including those crimes committed in clan wars and tribal fights) are impotant indicator that caused prematured death in many cases. That influences the total lifespan accordingly.
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