State of health inequality: HIV, tuberculosis and malaria

Summary

The video presents the WHO report State of inequality: HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, the first technical report to systematically assess global inequalities across all three diseases.

Main findings

• Unfair, avoidable inequalities are obstacles to meeting HIV, tuberculosis and malaria targets, but they have often been poorly documented and understood.
• In most countries, disadvantaged groups tend to experience worse outcomes. These include people who are poorer, have less education, or live in remote rural areas, compared with wealthier, more educated, and urban populations.
• Inequalities have often failed to narrow over the past decade.
• Some countries offer encouraging examples: they have small gaps or are reducing them by improving intervention coverage more quickly among disadvantaged groups. These cases offer lessons for reaching people with greater needs or who have been left behind.
• Reducing inequities can accelerate improvements in national averages and support progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals for the three diseases.

Recommendations for stronger inequality monitoring

The report recommends:

1. Include inequality indicators and targets in global and national disease strategies and performance assessments.
2. Make more and better inequality data available.
3. Conduct regular inequality analysis and reporting.
4. Use multiple forms of evidence to provide context for inequality monitoring.

The video concludes that monitoring inequalities and acting to improve the health of disadvantaged populations are essential to achieving disease-control goals and ending the epidemics.

Speakers and sources

• Speaker: Unidentified narrator in a voiceover.
• Source featured: WHO report, State of inequality: HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.