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3.5. Wealth-disaggregated access to health and health outcomes across OIC
countries
This subsection gives an overview on some indicators related to access to health across different socio-
economic groups in OIC countries. Standardized, disaggregated health indicators for a wide range of
health issues are still sparse and often not collected on a regular basis which would allow measuring
progress. As identified in WHO’s (2016) report on Monitoring Health for the SDGs, “comparable
estimates of service coverage across key inequality dimensions are dominated by reproductive,
maternal, newborn and child health indicators in countries that have conducted DHS or MICS surveys”4
(p. 21), which a) leaves large gaps on other health issues and/or b) does not allow for disaggregation
where other health or health related indicators are available.
In light of these challenges, we use information from the data repository of the Health Equity Monitor
(HEM)5 - one component theme of the Global Health Observatory, the main statistics repository of the
World Health Organization. This data repository contains re-analysed data pertaining to RMNCH from
Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS). Launched in
2013, HEM covers nearly 250 household health surveys from 94 countries across the world between
4 These are the two largest global household survey programmes that collect data about RMNCH, as well as socio-demographic
information. They are nationally representative household surveys, collected at the household level from women aged 15–49 years.
Data online at
Source: Health Equity Assessment Toolkit (HEAT): Software for exploring and comparing health
inequalities in countries. Built-in database edition. Version 3.0. Geneva, World Health Organization, 2018
Figure 23: Composite coverage index (%) by economic status in 35 OIC countries