In the last edition of the OECD Observer we showed how investing in a gas-based kitchen can save lives. The simple water closet can also be a means to good health and dignity, and a source of economic wellbeing, says a new OECD report, Benefits of Investing in Water and Sanitation.

In 1950, less than 1% of the global population was over 80. By 2050, the share of those aged 80 and over is expected to reach nearly 10% across OECD countries. The trouble is, while people are living longer, they are not always able to look after themselves. Relying on family help can be difficult, not just financially, but also because, as people live longer, their children may also be ageing and facing challenges of their own. That is why public authorities are starting to focus on the issue of long-term care and the provision of services for elderly people with reduced functional capacities.

The growing burden of healthcare expenditure on public budgets is hardly a recent phenomenon. For 15 years before the onset of the financial crisis, health spending per capita had been going up by over 4% per year in real terms across the OECD area–much faster than growth in real incomes. Nearly all OECD countries will soon have nearuniversal healthcare coverage–an historic achievement.

The number of people travelling abroad to seek medical treatment appears to have been growing in recent years. This could be part of a growing global trend.

“Obesity is one of the foremost public health emergencies of our time.”

Healthcare must be maintained as an essential public good

Until recently, public health authorities and policy makers have largely ignored rare diseases. It is time to afford them higher priority. Here is why.

Interviews of leaders of Portugal healthcare private sector.

Synthetic biology has the potential to drive significant advances in biomedicine. But there are myriad scientific, social, commercial and legal issues, which policymakers have set out to address.

Can greater use of information technology to manage whole healthcare systems help? The National Health Service Information Centre (NHS IC), England’s central, authoritative source of health and social care information for frontline decision makers, believes it can.

The healthcare sector rarely features prominently in trade policy. This is unfortunate, since the enormous differences in healthcare costs between countries imply that there are large potential gains from increased trade, writes economist Dean Baker.

That the health of citizens in OECD countries is improving is not in question. How sustainable healthcare systems are, however, is more of an issue. How can information technology help?

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, one question is how to balance the short-term pressure on the health budgets with the long-term obligations to deliver ever better health services to the public. Striking the right balance is not an easy task.

The cost of healthcare is on the rise, and with budgets tight, governments are anxious to contain expenditures. There is ample room for getting better value for money.

With austerity the order of the day in most OECD countries, the public is understandably anxious that budget cuts do as little harm as possible to the services they depend on. Few sectors capture the dilemmas this poses for policymakers quite like healthcare.

There were an estimated 140,000 suicides in OECD countries in 2006, the most recent year for which internationally comparable data is available. Death rates were lowest in the southern European countries of Greece, Italy and Spain, as well as Mexico and the UK, at fewer than seven deaths per 100,000 people. They were highest in Korea, Hungary, Japan and Finland, at 18 or more deaths per 100,000 people.

Health spending rises; Round up; Soundbites; Benvenuto!; Economy; Food speculation question; Chinese flexibility welcomed; Slovenia joins the OECD; Plus ça change...

The use of information and communication technologies in the health sector lags behind its use in many other parts of the economy, yet the advantages and potential savings are evident. Policymakers can do much to help close the gap.

One in nine women are diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their life and one in thirty die from the disease. Though survival rates are improving, due to a combination of increased awareness, earlier diagnosis and better treatments with innovative drugs, there are considerable differences in measured outcomes of cancer control across OECD countries. For example, while close to 90% of women aged 50-69 are screened annually in the Netherlands and Finland, only around 20% of women in that age group are screened in the Slovak Republic and Japan. Some countries that had low screening rates in 2000, such as the Czech and Slovak Republics, showed sharp increases by 2006, whereas some countries with already high rates, such as the US, Finland and Norway, reported declines.

The United States spent 16% of its national income (GDP) on health in 2007. This is by far the highest share in the OECD and more than seven percentage points higher than the average of 8.9% in OECD countries. Even France, Switzerland and Germany, the countries which, apart from the United States, spend the greatest proportion of national income on health, spent over 5 percentage points of GDP less: respectively 11.0%, 10.8% and 10.4% of their GDP.