Topic Highlights: Health Care System
Only few issues are as contentious as health policy.
The reform of the health care system is not just at the top of Germany's political agenda, but also rates highly in many other EU countries. In light of the present discussion in Germany, the EDS European Data Service presents a wide range of data that illustrate the EU-wide discrepancies as far as key health indicators such as hospital beds or health expenditure are concerned.
Some of the discrepancies are quite remarkable: Whilst Ireland has a mere 0.3 neurologists per 100000 inhabitants, Lithuania reaches almost 50 times this value (14.4). And in some cases the two extremes are not far apart geographically: The United Kingdom is at the bottom end of the scale as far as hospital beds are concerned (397 per
100 000 inhabitants), whereas Ireland is ranked first with 1006.
For more information see below:
Eurostat Data
Total government expenditure on health: The expenditure is expressed in million Euro and in percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP).Download table or access a bar chart
Employees in the health sector: Data table on the number of specialist doctors per 100 000 inhabitants.
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Hospital beds: Hospital beds: Number of beds per 100 000 inhabitants in the EU Member States.
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Average length of stay in hospital: The number of days spent in hospital broken down by type of disease for the years 2000 to 2003.
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Life expectancy at birth: Average life expectancy in years for men and women.
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Life expectancy and disability-free life expectancy at the age of 65: The indicator disability-free life expectancy measures the number of remaining years that a person of a specific age is expected to live in a healthy condition. A healthy condition is defined by the absence of limitations in functioning (disability).
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Standardised death rate per 100 000 inhabitants: Data for various diseases for the years 2000 to 2004.
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Eurostat Online database: This link leads directly to the database section on health.
Eurostat Online Database: Health
Eurostat Publications
Health in Europe - Pocketbook: This pocketbook provides a selection of figures on health and health determinants. It responds to a growing demand for comprehensive, consistent and comparable health data and indicators.Access pocketbook
SIGMA - An injection of statistics into health policy: Sigma is a magazine published twice a year by Eurostat. This issue focuses on health statistics and includes data from Eurostat, the national statistical offices, the Directorate General Health and many other institutions.
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Work and health in the European Union - A statistical portrait: This report is a statistical portrait of health and safety at work in the European Union. It constitutes the first joint analysis of the various statistical data available at EU level.
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Health statistics - Key data on health 2002: This publication responds to the growing demand for a comprehensive, consistent and internationally comparable set of health data and indicators. Data is only available for the EU-15 and EFTA Member States.
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Health statistics - Atlas on mortality in the European Union - Data 1994-1996: Based on data from the Nineties, this atlas describes the situation regarding mortality in the EU-15 Member States.
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Statistics in focus: They are available free of charge in PDF format:.
Causes of dead in the EU
News releases: Eurostat press releases relating to health issues.
18.07.2006 Causes of death in the EU - Significant differences among Member States
