World Health Report 2000: Ranking of Transition Economies

The World Health Organization (WHO) released on June 21 the World Health Report 2000—Health Systems Improving Performance. In the first ever analysis of the world’s health systems, WHO used five indicators: overall level of population health; health inequalities (or disparities) within the population; overall level of health system responsiveness (a combination of patient satisfaction and how well the system acts); distribution of responsiveness within the population (how well people of varying economic status find that they are served by the health system); and the distribution of the health system’s financial burden within the population (who pays the costs). The following table ranks the transition economies of Eastern Europe and Central Asia as well as the reforming economies of Asia based on this report. (For comparison, the ranking of the first three countries as well as that of the United States has been included.) The table also contains the latest data on life expectancies for both men and women as well as the proportion of those older than 60 years for each country.