Spain healthcare system in world’s top ten

Spain boasts the world’s eighth-best healthcare services, finds a new study by the Healthcare Access and Quality Index (HAQ), which was published last week by British medical journal, The Lancet…

The study assessed the healthcare provision of 195 countries, measuring a range of factors related to mortality rates that should ordinarily not prove fatal if effective medical care is to hand.

This included analysis of death rates from 32 recognised conditions and illnesses between 1990 and 2015, recording any and all improvements made worldwide.

Happily, pretty much every country has improved its healthcare over that time, with only a few nations (many that have descended into civil war) seeing their standards slip.

Out of a maximum score of 100, Spain achieved 90 points, which was enough for eighth place globally and ranked the country ahead of Italy (89), France (88), Greece (87), Germany (86), the UK (85) and Portugal (85).

Top of the charts was the mountainous principality of Andorra, which scored 95, followed closely by Iceland in second place on 94 points, Switzerland in third place (92 points) and Sweden and Norway making up the rest of the top five.

Out of the leading 15 countries, 13 were in western Europe, with only Australia (6^th position) and Japan (11th) breaking that monopoly.

However, the average score across the entire 195 nations was a relatively lowly 53.7 points, and while this is a marked improvement on 1990’s 40.7 points, there are still far too many nations globally with inadequate healthcare services.

Indeed, despite 167 of the 195 countries improving their performance, the gap between the haves and the have nots appears to have widened – in 1990 the leading country and the bottom country were separated by 62 points: in 2015 that gap had widened to 66 points.

For Spain, its healthcare system scored the maximum 100 points on the treatment of diphtheria, tetanus and measles, and 99 points on maternity and respiratory treatment. At the other end of the scale, Spain still has room for improvement in its treatment of Hodgkins Lymphoma (64 points), Leukemia (66) and gallbladder disease (74).