World Health Organization backs universal health care

Major inequalities in health and life expectancy persist worldwide, according to an independent World Health Organization commission which on Thursday called for all countries to offer universal health care.

Huge discrepancies also exist within countries, including Scotland where a boy born in the poor Glasgow suburb of Calton can expect to live to 54, 28 years less than one born in affluent Lenzie, just across town, it said.

"The health inequities we see in the world are absolutely dramatic in their scale," Michael Marmot, a WHO health researcher, who chaired the commission, told reporters.

"Between countries we have life expectancy differences of more than 40 years. A woman in Botswana can expect to live 43 years, in Japan 86 years."

The Commission on Social Determinants of Health, composed of 19 independent experts, handed over its three-year study to the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency.

"Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale," it declared.