United Nations International Labour Organization or ILO new report shows majority of the world’s rural populations continue to live and work without essential healthcare services compared to their urban-dwelling counterparts.
The report released on Mondays adds that 56 percent of people living in rural areas worldwide remain bereft of critical healthcare access, with the most acute instances being in Africa where an overwhelming 83 percent of rural inhabitants are uncovered, observing that the most affected countries are those facing the highest levels of poverty, UN News Digest reported.
ILO’s Social Protection Department Director Isabel Ortiz confirms that ‘decades of underinvestment in health interrupted efforts to develop national health systems and ultimately resulted in the neglect of health in rural areas’.
ILO Health Policy Coordinator Xenia Scheil-Adlung explains that ‘the lack of legal coverage, insufficient numbers of health workers, inadequate funding, and high [out-of-pocket payments] have created life-threatening inequities in many countries,’, at the.