About this Research Topic

Background

Contemporary Western Pacific WHO region of Asia consists of diverse economies ranging from high-income OECD nations such as Japan and South Korea, to middle-income nations such as Laos and Myanmar. It is home to the huge population and an epicenter of global manufacturing and industrial capacity. Throughout most of these vast jurisdictions and particularly in Japan, South Korea, Chinese coastal and urban areas and most of urban ASEAN countries’ areas, there has been a blossoming increase of prosperity and societal welfare over the past few decades. This is visible in terms of upward real GDP growth trends and continuous growth of living standards and average citizen’s purchasing power. Socioeconomic progress has resulted in expanded public and private funding for healthcare. Most of these societies have strengthened their ability to invest into the national networks of hospitals and primary care units and expand their insurance coverage ever closer to Universal Health Coverage ideals. This is visible in terms of more impressive health and pharmaceutical expenditures. This pattern is visible from Mongolia to South Korea and from Thailand to Malaysia.

Yet an array of significant challenges and obstacles toward achieving Sustainable Development Goals in healthcare lie ahead. The core drivers of spending faced by the regional nations are population aging, innovation in medical technologies and increased societal demand for them. Resource constraints remain substantial given the large population size of their nations and inner disparities in citizen income. In some countries growing gap in socioeconomic inequalities expressed in terms of Gini indices was also documented. These issues reflect in heavy out-of-pocket spending typical for most Western Pacific regions outside Japan. Serious issues in terms of affordability of medical care particularly in expensive NCDs such as cancer or autoimmune diseases have frequently led to the phenomenon of catastrophic household expenditure for health care.

Other prominent bottleneck inefficiencies refer to the provision of accessible and equitable medical care in the vast remote and rural areas. Ambitious insurance expansion strategies were adopted in China in several multiple five year plans with substantial success rates. Some middle-income ASEAN health systems still remain dependent on the foreign donor aid and development assistance for health. During the COVID-19 pandemic, additional constraints have been created with massive losses of governmental budgetary revenue streams coming from tourism for the global tourist destinations such as Thailand, Singapore or Indonesia. These and other resource constrains were partially overarched with an ambitious development of the network of national Health Technology Assessment agencies (INAHTA). South Korea remains on the forefront of policy development in the adoption of HTA and Cost-Effectiveness principles in decision making process on marketing approvals and reimbursement of innovative pharmaceuticals.

These and many other intriguing challenges and gaps in current seminal literature on Western Pacific Asia region makes for the timeliness of this Research Topic. Contributions across all eligible are welcomed.

Keywords: Asia-Pacific, Universal Health Coverage, Health Insurance, Health Expenditure, Pharmaceutical Expenditure, Developing countries, Health Care Cost, Medical Care, Japan, China, ASEAN, BRICS, LMICs, Third World, 2020s, XXI century

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