The 2022 edi­tion of Health in the Amer­i­c­as, the flag­ship pub­li­ca­tion of the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO), high­lights the im­pact of COVID-19 on the pop­u­la­tions of the re­gion, which was of­ten the epi­cen­tre of the pan­dem­ic with more than 177 mil­lion cas­es and 2.8 mil­lion deaths.

Launched dur­ing the 30th Pan Amer­i­can San­i­tary Con­fer­ence, the pub­li­ca­tion pro­vides an overview of the health sit­u­a­tion in each coun­try of the re­gion, un­der­lin­ing a drop in life ex­pectan­cy and out­lin­ing the chal­lenges ahead for health sys­tems, which were at times over­whelmed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic but demon­strat­ed sig­nif­i­cant re­silience.

"The pan­dem­ic has di­rect­ly and in­di­rect­ly af­fect­ed the health of peo­ple and threat­ened progress against var­i­ous dis­eases," said Se­bas­t­ian Gar­cia Saiso, Di­rec­tor of PA­HO's De­part­ment of Ev­i­dence and In­tel­li­gence for Ac­tion in Health.

"We hope the pub­li­ca­tion will help de­ci­sion-mak­ers and in­form pub­lic poli­cies to re­sume progress to­wards bet­ter health for all," he said.

Health in the Amer­i­c­as high­lights that life ex­pectan­cy in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean fell 2.9 years, from 75.1 years in 2019 to 72.2 in 2021, ac­cord­ing to es­ti­mates from the Unit­ed Na­tions World Pop­u­la­tion Prospects 2022. Al­though by small­er num­bers, life ex­pectan­cy al­so de­clined in North Amer­i­ca, with a re­duc­tion of 1.8 years.

"The drop in life ex­pectan­cy can be re­versed if coun­tries move for­ward with vac­ci­na­tion against COVID-19, strength­en their health ser­vices to pro­vide care for all, and re­duce in­equities that im­pact health," Gar­cía Saiso said.

The re­port un­der­scores that the re­gion ac­count­ed for 37% of all cas­es of COVID-19 and 45% of all deaths glob­al­ly. Al­though North Amer­i­ca ac­count­ed for 55% of all cas­es in the re­gion, 62% of all deaths oc­curred in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

Con­ti­nu­ity of care and health care pro­fes­sion­als were al­so great­ly af­fect­ed by the pan­dem­ic. By the end of 2021, 93% of coun­tries re­port­ed in­ter­rup­tions in the pro­vi­sion of es­sen­tial health ser­vices in all modal­i­ties, and, as of No­vem­ber 2021, 41 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries re­port­ed near­ly 2.4 mil­lion cas­es among health­care work­ers and 13,081 deaths.

Avail­able on­ly in dig­i­tal for­mat, Health in the Amer­i­c­as in­cludes da­ta vi­su­al­iza­tion tools and maps that al­low in­for­ma­tion to be com­pared and analysed. It al­so up­dates the health pro­files of coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries in the re­gion in a stan­dard­ized for­mat that in­cludes da­ta on more than 80 in­ter­a­gency in­di­ca­tors, in­clud­ing ma­ter­nal and child health, com­mu­ni­ca­ble and non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases, risk fac­tors, and mor­tal­i­ty.

Health in the Amer­i­c­as was first pub­lished in 1954 on a quin­quen­ni­al ba­sis. In 2017, a de­ci­sion was tak­en to turn it in­to a dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tion and to in­crease its pe­ri­od­ic­i­ty, delv­ing in­to spe­cif­ic top­ics of re­gion­al im­por­tance. Last year, the first un­der this new for­mat, the fo­cus was po­ten­tial­ly pre­ventable pre­ma­ture mor­tal­i­ty. —(PA­HO)

All is­sues of Health in the Amer­i­c­as can be viewed on the pub­li­ca­tion's web­site: https://hia.pa­ho.org/es