Global Health Inequities and the 10/90 Gap

This assignment delves into the issue of global health inequities and the persistent 10/90 gap, where 90% of research funding is directed towards diseases affecting 10% of the world's population. It explores the reasons behind these disparities, including poverty, weak infrastructure, and limited access to essential medicines and treatments, particularly in developing countries. The assignment emphasizes the need for a more equitable distribution of resources and collaborative efforts to address global health challenges effectively.

Running head: GLOBAL HEALTH
Global Health
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1GLOBAL HEALTH
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
The Global health and 10/90 Gap..............................................................................................2
World Health Organization....................................................................................................3
Failures and weak infrastructure............................................................................................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................5
References..................................................................................................................................6

2GLOBAL HEALTH
Introduction
Global Health refers to the study, practice and research that prioritize health
improvement and achievement of health equity among individuals across the world. The
Article 25 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 declares that, each and every
individual have the right of living a standard and healthy life. Unfortunately there comes the
health disparity in between the high income groups and the lower income groups. Moreover,
there are differences in between the individuals of a country, which results in unhealthy
settings as many people do not have sufficient accessibility to care (Luchetti, 2014).
The Global health and 10/90 Gap
The essay highlights the concept of Global Health and the 10/90 Gap. The Global
Health’s field is basically concerned with the individuals’ health worldwide. It focuses on the
issues that are significant to global, economy and politics. These issues go beyond the
national boundaries and are solved best through the international collaboration. The
initiatives of Global Health focus on the improvement of the well being and health of
impoverished, underserved and vulnerable people worldwide (Atkins et al., 2016). These
initiatives further include reduction strategies of poverty; preventive measures of diseases
like HIV, tuberculosis, malaria; improvement of food security and nutrition; policies to raise
the environmental standards as well as the living conditions and gender equality promotion
(Elsabbagh et al., 2012).
In the year 2001, World Health Organization (WHO) made recommendations of
funding the Global Health by 0.1% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The lower income
countries’ average expenditure per capita is estimated to be 20 dollars per year, on the other
hand, Western countries’ expenditure is estimated to be at 947 dollars. The target is to reach

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the countries those are the most disadvantaged ones, with estimation of 44-60 dollars per
capita. This will ensure the poorest countries’ accessibility to the essential services related to
health. Directing 0.1% of Gross Domestic Product, of the developed countries to Global
Health’s aids would help in closing the gap and reach the target of 44-60 dollars, which
would allow saving the lives of eight million individuals per year (World Health
Organization. 2015).
Despite all these good intentions, the disparity between the higher and lower income
countries remains. The current expenditure and the developed countries’ commitments are in
the context, where the Global Health aids’ percentage have been declined by many donor
countries. Activists are claiming that only about 10% of the research of Global Health is
committed to the conditions which accounts for 90% of the burden related to global disease,
this is the so called 10/90 gap. They feel that almost all the lower income countries have
neglected the cure of fatal diseases and the pharmaceutical companies have done minimal
investment for the research and treatment development of these diseases (McGregor,
Henderson & Kaldor, 2014).
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization even acknowledges the fact that three diseases are
being genuinely neglected, those are Leishmaniosis, Chagas disease and African
trypanosomiasis. A huge proportion of the illness, especially in the lower income countries
can be entirely preventable as well as treatable with the existing medicines and interventions
(Patel, 2014). Majority of the diseases, in the lower income countries are due the poverty,
poor nutrition, air pollution, lack of accessibility to proper sanitation and lack of health
education. The World Health Organization estimates that the diseases in association with
poverty, accounts for about 45% in the poor countries. However, all the deaths caused by

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such diseases are either preventable on the first place or curable with the existing medicines
(Thornicroft et al., 2012).
If the treatments exist in majority of the poor countries, why is the mortality rate so
high? This is because they lack accessibility to essential treatments and medicines, which is a
political as well as economic problem. According to World Health Organization,
approximately 30% of world population is still lacking the regular accessibility of existing
drugs. This figure rises over 50% among the poorest segments of Asia and Africa (World
Health Organization. 2015). Even when there is the availability of drugs, weak regulation
leads to manhandling and degrades their quality. Among these populations, the poorest socio
economic categories suffer the accessibility to these existing medicines. The implications for
the health policy’s failure are intense. According to a study, more than ten million children
are dying unnecessarily every year, in most countries with low and poor income, due to many
preventable diseases like diarrhea, malaria, malnutrition, measles and others (Viergever,
2013).
Failures and weak infrastructure
Governments in most of the countries fail to reach the success rate in the aspect of
health, as they impose taxes and tariffs on medicines. Moreover, in poorer countries,
governments tend to focus more on other issues like defense, instead of health (Thornicroft et
al., 2012). Often they hinder the wealth creation by imposing several obstacles in transferring
property, unnecessary barriers on businesses and entrepreneurs, restrictions in trade through
tariffs and many more. Due to all these political failures, the poor populations are not able to
access the treatment as well as medicines, which could have easily transformed their lives
and their standard of living (McGregor, Henderson & Kaldor, 2014).

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Weak infrastructure of the healthcare may also lead to the lack of accessibility to
medical health and treatment. This is the result of the country’s financial as well as human
resource problems. For example; the country Malawi has fewer doctors; only one for over
49,118 individuals. Poverty is a major factor and goes hand in hand with malnutrition. Poor
populations use crop residues, wood, animal dung and others to cook food and heat homes,
which gives rise to respiratory diseases. Moreover, poor sanitation is the consequence of
poverty, which leads to diarrhea and other diseases (Viergever, 2013).
Conclusion
To conclude, it is important to decide where the efforts should be directed and
invested, without any prejudices. This also includes those who are currently standing on the
economic paradigm as per the market basis. Despite of the World Health Organization’s
findings, the curable diseases’ disparity still lies within the developed and developing
countries. This causes the 10/90 gap which can be bridged only if the countries show some
health related concern. Many argues that simple medicines and treatments which can stop
curable diseases like diarrhea, malaria and more; are available in these countries. The
problem arises when majority of the poor people cannot access these medicines. It is high
time to analyze all possible strategies in order to tackle the Global Health issues.

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References
Atkins, S., Marsden, S., Diwan, V., Zwarenstein, M., & ARCADE consortium. (2016).
North–south collaboration and capacity development in global health research in low-
and middle-income countries–the ARCADE projects. Global health action, 9(1),
30524.
Elsabbagh, M., Divan, G., Koh, Y. J., Kim, Y. S., Kauchali, S., Marcín, C., ... & Yasamy, M.
T. (2012). Global prevalence of autism and other pervasive developmental
disorders. Autism Research, 5(3), 160-179.
Luchetti, M. (2014). Global Health and the 10/90 gap. British Journal of Medical
Practitioners, 7(4), a731.
McGregor, S., Henderson, K. J., & Kaldor, J. M. (2014). How are health research priorities
set in low and middle income countries? A systematic review of published
reports. PLoS One, 9(10), e108787.
Patel, V. (2014). Why mental health matters to global health. Transcultural psychiatry, 51(6),
777-789.
Thornicroft, G., Cooper, S., Bortel, T. V., Kakuma, R., & Lund, C. (2012). Capacity building
in global mental health research. Harvard review of psychiatry, 20(1), 13-24.
Viergever, R. F. (2013). The mismatch between the health research and development (R&D)
that is needed and the R&D that is undertaken: an overview of the problem, the
causes, and solutions. Global health action, 6(1), 22450.
World Health Organization. (2015). Progress on sanitation and drinking water: 2015 update
and MDG assessment. World Health Organization.