International healthcare

Let’ s start with the good news. As described in the OECD report on Healthcare, life expectancy continues to increase worldwide, with a rate of about 3-4 months more per year. Japan stands at the top of the list (83,4 years), followed immediately by the European protagonists of longevity: Spain (83,2), Switzerland (82,9), Italy (82,8) and France (82,3). Concerning access to care, about 20% of health expenditure comes from the citizens’ own pockets. This percentage goes below 10% in France and in the United Kingdom only. Moreover, the number of nurses and doctors has increased since 2000, especially in countries such as the UK where the number of this kind of specialists was lower. The OECD report highlights the paradox of Italy, the Mediterranean diet birthplace and, at the same time, the country where overweight children and obesity rates are among the highest in the world. This figure ranks our country in the fifth place amongst all organization members, right behind Greece, UK, US and New Zealand. Italy scored another first place not to be proud of: the very high percentage of cesarean sections (36,1%), over and above the OECD average (27,6%) and pretty far from French (20,8%) and British (23%) standards.