Many countries are working towards the acceleration of universal health coverage (UHC). But what happens if your population doesn’t have the same level of access to quality care services, or can’t afford it even if they do? How do you find out how many have ‘unmet healthcare needs’?
A recent study supported by the WHO Centre for Health Development (WHO Kobe Centre - WKC) explored how to capture this information using household surveys.
The analysis examined self-reports on unmet need for healthcare - a time when a person had a health concern but did not receive medical attention - asked as part of 17 health, social, and economic surveys. The surveys were conducted between 2001 and 2019 across 83 low-, middle- and high-income countries.
Noting the large variation in questions and response categories, the results point to low levels (less than 2%) of unmet need reported in adults aged 60+ years in countries like Andorra, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Slovenia, Thailand and Viet Nam to rates of over 50% in Georgia, Haiti, Morocco, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe.
These estimates may underestimate the problem if we consider the many cases of older people who do not recognize their health problems or have low expectations for health and long term care and therefore under-report their unmet needs. This gap in accounting for unmet needs around the world is contributing not only to the underutilization of needed services but also to widening inequalities in healthcare access and outcomes.
Unmet need for healthcare is a major concern for older individuals and their families, for national policymakers who aim to ensure older population’s health needs are met, and for global efforts to track progress toward UHC
Find more about our work on unmet needs here.
WKC Working Paper: Prevalence of unmet health care need in older adults in 83 countries – measuring progressing towards universal health coverage in the context of global population ageing.
This paper was written by Paul Kowal, Barbara Corso, Kanya Anindya, Flavia C.D. Andrade, Thanh Long Giang, Maria Teresa Calzada Guitierrez, Wiraporn Pothisiri, Nekehia T. Quashie, Herney Alonso Rengifo Reina, Megumi Rosenberg, Andy Towers, Paolo Miguel Manalang Vicerra, Nadia Minicuci, Nawi Ng, and Julie Byles.
Photo caption: Prevalence of unmet healthcare need overall for adults 60 years old and above using the most recently available data (survey year shown) by country in the WHO Region of the Americas
Note: Results are unweighted due to differences in weights provided for each study. Results for other countries and regions are presented in the working paper.