An In-Depth Analysis of Colombia's Public Health and Healthcare System

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the public health landscape in Colombia. It begins with an introduction to the country, its health status, and key health issues such as malaria, malnutrition, and snakebites. The report delves into the historical timeline of health issues, highlighting significant milestones and reforms in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. It then examines the building blocks of the healthcare system, including health service delivery and the health workforce. Furthermore, the report analyzes trend data, focusing on life expectancy, HALE, and DALY to assess the performance of the healthcare system. The analysis considers the country's position in relation to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and compares Colombia's healthcare system to other countries in South America. The report concludes with a summary of the findings and references used.

Global Public Health

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
SECTION 1......................................................................................................................................3
Introduction to the Country and its Health Status.......................................................................3
Overview of the health issues of the country..............................................................................4
SECTION 2......................................................................................................................................5
Historical Timeline of Health Issues in Colombia......................................................................5
Building Blocks of Healthcare System.......................................................................................5
SECTION 3......................................................................................................................................6
Trend data analysis of Healthcare System of Colombia.............................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
In this assignment the author will include a description of the health conditions, issues
and challenges of Colombia, a country in South America along with its health status in the real
life. The author will also include a discussion on the health system of Colombia, charts and
prediction of health of Colombia and assessment of performance in relation to specific targets
under a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG).
SECTION 1
Introduction to the Country and its Health Status
The chosen country is Colombia which is located in South America. The country is a
great place to live. It provides great services regarding wellness and health of the people. They
maintain beautiful parks, offer howling indoor and outdoor activities like swimming, golf, tennis
and recreation league play. It has a population of over 50,883,000 (estimated in the year 2020)
and it is surrounded by the Caribbean Sea in the north, by Panama in north-west, by Ecuador and
Peru in south, by Venezuela in east, by Brazil in south-east and by Pacific Ocean in the west.
Bagota is the capital district and also the largest city in the entire country. Average gross salary
in Colombia is $42,141 per household (Oni and et. al, 2019). The sex ratio of Columbia is:
Female= 25,898,000 and Male= 24,985,000, which depicts that there is 96.47 males for every
100 females. The median age of people in Colombia is 31.3 years. The country has a poverty rate
of 28.20%.
Colombia inhabitants various people of different-different religions. The residents are
Baptists, Methodists, Lutheran, Catholic and Jewish to name a few. As per the recent American
Community Survey the racial composition of Columbia is:
 White: 37%
 Black or African American: 10.4%
 Two or more races: 2.78%
 Mestizo: 49%
 Amerindian: 4.4%
 Romani: 0.01%
Average life expectancy at birth of people of Colombia is 76.6 years where male life
expectancy is 73.5 years and female life expectancy of 80 years. Columbia comes under Amr-B

of the list provided by WHO which consists of its member state region. It is considered as
developed WHO member state with low child and low adult mortality rate.
As per the world bank income classification, Amr-B is classified as Upper middle income
economies. WHO ranked the healthcare system of Columbia 22nd among 191 countries.
American Economia, a financial publication listed Latin America's top 58 hospitals among these
58 hospitals 23 hospitals are based in Columbia. 40% of the top Latin hospitals are located in
Colombia (Modjarrad and et. al, 2016). Life expectancy indicates the average life span of a
person and also indicates the overall health of the country. Colombia's life expectancy is stable
with little fluctuations which depicts that the country has good healthcare system. The higher the
life expectancy, the better a country is shaped. Infant Mortality Rate measure the death of infants
of age younger than 1 year in a particular group or country. This rate indicates the overall health
of the country. The infant mortality rate of Colombia is 11.8 deaths per 1,000 births (as in 2019).
Infant Mortality Rate of Colombia fluctuates only a little which shows the strength of healthcare
system in the country.
Overview of the health issues of the country
The major health concerns of Colombia are Malaria, malnutrition, snakebites etc. This
report will consist only these three major health issues. Malaria is one major health issue that
affects 85% population of the country. Mainly the people which are affected come from Pacific
Coast, Eastern Savannas and Amazon Jungles with an estimate of 250,000 cases per year. Its
mortality rate is 3 per 100,000 cases. Anaemia has different forms which critically affect the
population, especially the young ones and children under the age of 5 years. Approx 25% of
children are affected through iron deficiency anaemia. Snakebites are also a big concern in the
country of Colombia as there is a shortage of antivenom drugs all over the country. The Country
has some budget constraints which has made the infection increase. Further more United Nations
World Food Program in corporation with Columbian government has launched a prevention and
reduction of anaemia program to support healthy development of the children of Colombia
(Ohannessian, Duong and Odone, 2020).

SECTION 2
Historical Timeline of Health Issues in Colombia
In this timeline the 19th, 20th and 21st century is taken into consideration. In 1877, as a
result of past health issues people took initiative in studying health one such individual was Anna
Galvis Hotz who became the first Colombian woman to become a doctor of medicines.
Colombia's health care improved greatly after a change in its health standards in 1980s. In 1993
a new reform was introduced which shifted the burden of providing health care services from
providers to the people who avail such services. This reform widened the the coverage of health
care services from 21% of population (pre 1993) to 56% in 2004 and 66% in 2005 (Birn, Pillay
and Holtz, 2017). Although the widespread of social and health security system has not reached
to the poor as they still can not afford for these services. The poor also have relatively high
mortality rates.
Building Blocks of Healthcare System
Health Service Delivery: Health service delivery is of crucial importance for any
country. It is truly important to develop and bring the best out of these services in order to reduce
child mortality rate, infant mortality rate, material mortality rate, tuberculosis, malaria and
AIDS/HIV. In Colombia the General System of Social Security in Health (SGSSS) is established
by the 100 Law of 1993. this system enlists that in Colombia a social insurance model with
private and public companies in it has two insurance schemes: for the ones who don't have the
ability to pay and for the ones who can pay independently. The people who do not have the
ability to pay have subsidised insurance and the people who have the ability to pay have
contributory insurances. The reform of 1993 had the main objectives of preventing families
against harmful expenditure which are associated with the health services that they need to pay
(Schwalbe and Wahl, 2020).
Health Workforce: Health workforce consists of the individuals who are deployed or
responsible to supply health services and organise them. This is also of a crucial importance for
any country. Any country's health status highly depends upon the skills, knowledge, motivation
and employment of its health workforce. National plans and policies are formed by considering
numerous factors and need sound information and evidence which support the need and
objective of human resource for heath care system and its objectives. Colombia is working with

WHO to strengthen to give the desired evidence related to the health workforce including a data
set to monitor the stock of human resource of healthcare system so that WHO can effectively set
standard and allocate the required workforce as per the data recorded and requirements of health
workforce all over the world, especially Colombia.
SECTION 3
Trend data analysis of Healthcare System of Colombia
Life Expectancy: Life Expectancy of Colombia as for the year 2013 is 76.105 compared
to the 77.109 which was for the year 2018. The Life expectancy was stable in the earlier years. It
increased on a continuous basis after 2015 (Agomo and et. al, 2018). This shows that the
healthcare system of Colombia has improved and faced a lot of changes which has certainly
made available the healthcare services to every section of the society. It formed reforms and
policies like that of insurance, which facilitated the availability of healthcare services to even
people who can not pay these for these services. Compared to other countries in South America
Columbia holds an average place among them. The highest life expectancy is of Chile in South
America, which is 78.80 as compared to Colombia which is 75.30 presently. The lowest life
expectancy is of Guyana, which has the life expectancy of 69.77.
HALE and DALY: This is a method used to evaluate the number of years which can be
lived with good health and the number of years which can be lived by a person in disability
adjusted life. Healthy Life Expectancy (HLE) quantifies the number of years in which the life
can be lived in good health. To its complementary Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY) a
composite measure of disease burden displaying both immature mortality and illustration and
intensity of bad health.
CONCLUSION
The above report concludes that Colombia is under development which will show great
results in the Healthcare System of Colombia. The above report included a description about
health issues and the measure to calculate these issues. Life expectancy is one such measure
which helps in assessment of health issues in the country.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Oni and et. al, 2019. Global public health starts at home: upstream approaches to global health
training. The Lancet Global Health. 7(3). pp.e301-e302.
Modjarrad and et. al, 2016. Developing global norms for sharing data and results during public
health emergencies. PLoS Medicine. 13(1). p.e1001935.
Ohannessian, R., Duong, T.A. and Odone, A., 2020. Global telemedicine implementation and
integration within health systems to fight the COVID-19 pandemic: a call to
action. JMIR public health and surveillance. 6(2). p.e18810.
Birn, A.E., Pillay, Y. and Holtz, T.H., 2017. Textbook of global health. Oxford University Press.
Schwalbe, N. and Wahl, B., 2020. Artificial intelligence and the future of global health. The
Lancet. 395(10236). pp.1579-1586.
Agomo and et. al, 2018. Community pharmacists' contribution to public health: assessing the
global evidence base. Clinical Pharmacist. 10(4).