Comparing Financing and Healthcare Delivery in the UK and Malawi

Financing and Healthcare Delivery in the United Kingdom

Comparing the financing and healthcare delivery of the four countries of the United Kingdom and Malawi.

The significance of financing the health sector to empower the healthcare system for improved health outcomes cannot be over emphasis and the funding of healthcare as a system, has become a mutual problem worldwide (Makuta and O’Hare 2015; Farag et al., 2013; WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, 2001).Consequently, the universal health coverage proposes that everyone globally, should have access to an healthcare coverage without financial barriers or poverty (World Health Organization, 2017). This has made many governments worldwide, to eliminated child health and maternal services user fees (Hatt et al., 2013; McKinnon et al., 2015), in order to enhance their services and minimize payment by cash burden, thereby increasing public funding. Also, Low-income countries continue to attract international financing and investment towards their health sectors (Dieleman et al., 2015), in order to enhance and reduce the financial burden of its health care system.

Comparing the financing and healthcare delivery of the four countries of the United Kingdom and Malawi:

To begin, the UK is categorized as a high income country with a 9.2% total expenditure on health in 2014, and in 2016, the total population for Northern Ireland and Great Britain were 65 789 000 with 79/83years life expectancy for both male and female at birth(The World Bank, 2017; World Health Organization, 2017).  The UK have common features associated with other categorized high-income countries such as, high standard of living, low birth and child mortality rate, high GDP per capital, low mortality rate, a member of OECD and donors of developmental assistance to low-income countries (Farias, 2019). Amongst the high-income countries of the world the UK health care system was ranked as the best in the world by the Commonwealth Fund survey carried out in 2017 (Collier, 2017). This means people living in the UK now live healthier and longer with an increase in life expectancy resulting to an ageing population. An ageing population is now parts of the challenges NHS UK is facing, followed by diabetes, mental health for adults, renal disease, cancer and coronary heart disease which covers approximately 16% of the entire National Health (NHS) expenses, 12% of morbidity and between70% or 40% on mortality (Grosios, 2010).

The remote and rural area in Scotland is larger compared to its neighbors, giving that, Scotland have a geographical problems that other areas of the United Kingdom do not experience and the population of people living in Scotland is about 5.2million (OECD, 2016).Scotland is experiencing a geographical substantial challenges especially in providing healthcare for remote areas. This is because approximately 25% of the population of people living in Scotland resides in remote or rural areas across the 94% of the mainland defined as remote or rural (Mac Vicar and Nicoll, 2013).

In terms of the organization of the healthcare delivery system in Scotland, the Scottish Parliament who is accountable for Government ‘s Health and Social Care Directorate who also, is accountable for the implementation and development of social and healthcare policy, public health and NHS administration (Robison, 2016).