"The toxic combination of bad policies, economics and politics is in large measure responsible for the fact that a majority of people in the world do not enjoy the good health that is biologically possible," the WHO commissioners wrote in "Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity through Action on the Social Determinants of Health."
The study, the result of three years of investigation by policy makers, academics, former heads of states and ex ministers of health, was presented Thursday to WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan.
Since global health systems will not naturally move towards equity, there must be unprecedented leadership to require all stakeholders in the health sector to review their impact on people's health, Chan said.
Because of the existing social inequities, an indigenous Australian male will live on the average 17 years less than other Australian men. A Bolivian infant with a mother who did not go to school will have a 10 percent chance of dying, while the chance is trimmed to 0.4 percent for the baby whose mother reached high school.
In Uganda the death rate of children in the bottom fifth of households is almost twice as high as those from the top fifth households.
The WHO stressed wealth alone is not sufficient to determine the health of a country's citizens. It pointed as examples low-income countries like Cuba, Costa Rica, China and Sri Lanka which got good levels of good health despite relatively low national incomes.
