Health at a Glance: Asia/Pacific 2022
Measuring Progress Towards Universal Health Coverage
This seventh edition of Health at a Glance Asia/Pacific presents a set of key indicators of health status, the determinants of health, health-care resources and utilisation, health-care expenditure and financing, and quality of care across 27 Asia-Pacific countries and territories. It also provides a series of dashboards to compare performance across countries and territories, and a thematic analysis on the health impact of COVID-19. Drawing on a wide range of data sources, it builds on the format used in previous editions of Health at a Glance, and gives readers a better understanding of the factors that affect the health of populations and the performance of health systems in these countries and territories. Each of the indicators is presented in a user-friendly format, consisting of charts illustrating variations across countries and territories, and over time, brief descriptive analyses highlighting the major findings conveyed by the data, and a methodological box on the definition of the indicators and any limitations in data comparability. An annex provides additional information on the demographic and economic context in which health systems operate.
Health expenditure per capita and in relation to GDP
Across Asia-Pacific countries, per capita health spending continued to rise prior to the COVID‑19 pandemic. Low- and lower-middle‑income Asia-Pacific countries per capita health spending increased by 65% between 2010 and 2019, while in upper middle countries it grew by 76% during the same period; spending in high-income countries also grew, but more modestly at 33%. Despite this, huge differences in per capita health care spending remained in Asia-Pacific countries in 2019 (), ranging from only 105 international dollars (USD PPPs) in Bangladesh to 5 294 international dollars (USD PPPs) in Australia. For comparison, average OECD current health spending per capita in 2019 was around 15 times that of the low-income countries in Asia-Pacific (4 353 versus 286 USD PPPs).