Ebola-Stricken Countries Lagged in Health Systems

savethechildren.org

CLICK HERE - REPORT - A WAKE-UP CALL - Lessons from Ebola for the world’s health systems (50 page .PDF report)

nytimes.com - by Donald G. McNeil Jr. - March 9, 2015

The world has spent more than $4 billion fighting Ebola, but according to a new report from Save the Children, it would have cost only $1.6 billion to bring health care systems up to minimum standards in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, which might have prevented the outbreak or ended it faster.

Even before Ebola struck West Africa, more than 25 countries had health care systems worse than those in impoverished Liberia and Sierra Leone, the report also found.

The assessment, released last week, relied on typical health measures like infant mortality, childhood immunization rates and numbers of health care workers per capita. But it also included assessments of fairness, such as government health spending and how often the poorest of the poor had doctors, nurses or midwives present at births.

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