EUROPE/ITALY - Public spending for development: Ethiopia spends 3 dollars per person for healthcare while most industrialised countries spend over 2,000 dollars per person

Rome (Fides Service) - The gap between industrialised countries and poor countries continues to expand, aid to the third world is diminishing and the little that does arrive is insufficient.
This was the tragic situation illustrated yesterday in Rome by CUAMM Doctors with Africa Italian NGO presenting a Meeting on the theme “Just sharing: World Unbalance in Healthcare”, organised in Padova, 20 November.
Gavino Maciocco, docent in Hygiene and Healthcare at the University of Florence, gave the most serious details: “Ethiopia spends 3 dollars per person for healthcare while most industrialised countries spend over 2,000 dollars per person; life expectancy in the West is 78 years, in Africa people can hope to live to 35-40 at the most; in poor countries 2,8 million die of AIDS every year and there are no prospects for improvement”.
In effect in most poor countries public spending for development is well below the UN target of 0.7% of the GNP target. (AP) (21/10/2004 Agenzia Fides; Righe: 18; Parole: 205)