“Amid gains on personal health-care access and quality, striking disparities remained regarding HAQ Index scores achieved by 2016, and how quickly locations improved over time. In 2016, HAQ Index performance diverged along the development spectrum, ranging from more than 97 in Iceland to less than 20 in the Central African Republic and Somalia. Subnational inequalities were particularly pronounced in China and India, although high-income countries, including England and the USA, also saw considerable local gaps in performance. The global pace of progress accelerated from 2000 to 2016, a trend fuelled by many low-SDI and low-middle-SDI countries in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia. By contrast, several countries saw slowed or minimal improvement from 2000 to 2016 after recording larger gains from 1990 to 2000. Examining patterns in broader causes unveiled considerable heterogeneity in country-level improvements across health areas. These findings, coupled with the variable relationships between national HAQ Index values and potential correlates of performance, underscore the complexities of orienting health systems toward providing access to quality services across health needs and along continuums of care.”

Source: GBD 2016 Healthcare Access and Quality Collaborators. “Measuring performance on the Healthcare Access and Quality Index for 195 countries and territories and selected subnational locations: a systematic analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016.” Lancet (London, England) vol. 391,10136 (2018): 2236-2271. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(18)30994-2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5986687/