The SDG agenda gives recognition to Universal Health Coverage as key to achieving all other health targets. SDG 3c sets a target to “substantially increase health financing and the recruitment, development, training and retention of the health workforce in developing countries, especially in least developed countries and small island developing States.
By using the WFSA’s Workforce data on the absolute number of Physician Anaesthesia Providers (PAPs) which was collected in the 2015/2016 workforce survey and updated and displayed in the Workforce Map, and each country’s population data, WorldMapper was able to distort country size depending on the number of PAPs. In doing so, they were able to illustrate the unequal distribution of PAPs around the world.
The highest number of PAPs per 100 000 inhabitants can be found in Monaco (60), Austria (39), San Marino (38) and Denmark (34). More than 20 countries have more than 20 anaesthesiologists per 100 000 inhabitants, all are highly developed countries, mostly from Europe and North America.
More than 50 countries have only 1 or fewer anaesthesiologists per 100 000 inhabitants, most of these countries are from the African continent, from Asia there are Laos, Nepal, Bangladesh and Indonesia among them.
This demonstrates the urgent need to scale-up the anaesthesia workforce in many areas of the world, most notably in sub-Saharan Africa.
