ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies three major challenges for ending health deprivations in Asia: lagging health outcomes, inequity, and the level and pattern of public expenditure.
Despite rapid economic growth in much of Asia, important health outcomes are lagging. Nearly half of global childhood deaths from diarrhea occur in Asia; 16 Asian countries are judged to be making slow progress in reducing maternal mortality; and more than half of the world’s stunted children – a sign of chronic undernutrition – live in Asia. This is a problem because good health outcomes are intrinsically valuable, and a human right. Good health outcomes also contribute to economic productivity and free up money that otherwise would be spent on treating illness. Failure to adequately improve basic health outcomes despite decades of economic growth means that some health systems in Asia now face a double burden: an unfinished agenda of reducing undernutrition, maternal and infant deaths, and infectious diseases and a simultaneous need to respond to the growing challenge of expensive-to-treat noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. The first section of this chapter elaborates.
