The Global South is a geo-economic designation referring to a large variety of societies primarily located in the Southern Hemisphere comprising mostly of Latin America, Africa and Asian developing nations with a few exceptions located in Eastern Europe, Balkans, and Caucasus. Innovation in agricultural technologies, growing living standards, rural-urban migration of a scale, occurrence of mega cities, consumption of processed foods and sedentary lifestyle were milestones of industrial development across the Global South during the last half a century. This array of circumstances has created a strong impetus towards explosion of prevalence and incidence of expensive, chronic and mostly incurable noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).
Coupled with population aging and innovations in medical technology this burden of disease landscape continues to challenge health financing sustainability across the Global South’s Low-and-Middle-Income countries (LMICs).
Low-and-Middle-Income countries typically expose large inequalities in affordability and accessibility of medical care associated with prolonged waiting lists for invasive radiology, implantation surgery and novel pharmaceuticals. Boomerang effect of rising health care expenditure remains induced by denied preventive and early screening / diagnostic services. Typically, this leads to intensive care unit hospital admissions in an advanced stage of diverse NCDs when they are much more difficult and expensive to treat. Global South’s LMICs nations also suffer from double burden of NCDs and traditional infectious diseases whose prevalence pool has not been successfully liquidated unlike in many Global North regions. Among the core Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that remains to the achieved universal health coverage (UHC) and struggle against catastrophic health expenditure.
Nowadays vast majority of world population and resources reside in the Southern Hemisphere. At the same time real gross domestic product (GPD) growth engines worldwide are Emerging Markets who typically belong to this group of nations. Their local governments continue to struggle to accelerate innovation, improve access to education expand health insurance coverage, increase density of medical staff, eradicate frequent shortages of medicines. Special focus is on the effort to improve health of the populations residing in rural and remote areas far away from hotbeds of economic activity such as Asian coastal industrial region and mega cities.
This Collection will welcome all sorts of contributions, coming from Global North and South alike attempting to narrow knowledge gaps in seminal literature and fulfil the vast unmet needs of these communities.
The Collection The Global South’s Long-Term Challenge of Sustainable Healthcare in the LMICs' Health Systems relates and advances research surrounding the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which has been adopted by all United Nations Member States. Specific SDGs for this Collection include: 1 – No Poverty, 3 - Good Health and Well-being, 10 – Reduced Inequalities, 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities.
