Two Health Numbers That Went The Wrong Way

Almost everything about Philippine health got better over sixty years. I want to show you the two things that did not, because they are the ones nobody puts in the summary.

First, The Good Part

In 1960 a Filipino could expect to live 59.2 years. Now it is 69.9. That is 10.8 years added to an average life.

Babies did even better. In 1960, 62.3 out of every 1,000 died before their first birthday. Now it is 21.7.

That is a huge win. Vaccines, clean water, antibiotics, more doctors. It is real and I do not want to talk past it.

The One That Went Backwards

Tuberculosis. TB. A lung illness that spreads by coughing, and one we know how to cure.

In 2000 we had 590 cases for every 100,000 people. Today we have 625.

It went up. While everything else went down.

Now put us next to the neighbours. In the last year all five countries were measured together, Malaysia had 97 and we had 632. That is 6.5 times more.

We are the worst of the five countries I compared. Not a little worse. Six and a half times the best.

And TB is curable. That is what makes this the sharpest number on the page. It is not a disease we lack a cure for. It is one we are not catching and finishing.

The Second One: Who Pays

Here is the number I think explains a lot of the first one.

When money is spent on health in this country, 44.4 out of every 100 pesos comes straight out of a family's pocket at the clinic. Not from insurance. Not from government. From the person who is sick, that day.

That is the highest of the five countries too.

And the whole pot is small. All health spending together is 5.1 out of every 100 pesos the country makes.

Think about what that means with a cough that will not go away. Going to the clinic costs money you have today. So you wait. You wait until you cannot work.

TB takes months of pills to cure and it spreads while you wait. A disease that punishes delay, in a system that makes you pay to not delay. I cannot prove the link from this data. But the two worst numbers on my page sit right next to each other.

A Third Thing, Quieter

Measles shots have been slipping.

To stop measles spreading you need about 95 out of every 100 children protected. Below that it comes back.

We are at 80. We used to be at 92.

Our chart has never once touched the line where measles stops. It got close, then fell away.

What I Could Not Get

The health department has the real Philippine numbers. Disease by disease, region by region.

Their website turns away programs. Only people with browsers get in.

So everything here is from the World Bank, which republishes the parts that can be compared between countries. It is national only. No regional breakdown, no HIV count, no outbreak charts.

The old version of this page had an HIV number on it. I took it off. Not because the problem is not real — it is, and it is growing — but because I could not open the file it should have come from, and neither had whoever put it there.