Healthcare in Finland - Health Status - Health Care Indicators

Health Care Indicators

Finnish health care can be considered good by several indicators. For example, due to public health interventions and progress in medical care there have been remarkable improvements in life expectancy in Finland over the past few decades. Life expectancy on 2011 is 82 years for women and 75 years for men, which ranks Finland high on a global comparison.

Also good results have also been achieved regarding Infant mortality and maternal mortality rates, which are one of the among the lowest in the world. The infant mortality rate in Finland, as in other OECD countries, has fallen greatly over the past decades. It stood at 2.6 deaths per 1 000 live births in 2009.

In 2009, Finland had 2.7 practicing physicians per 1 000 population which was the lowest among the Nordic countries. This can partly be explained by the important role that nurses which reduces the need for physician consultations. In 2009 there were 9.6 nurses per 1 000 population.

Finland is successful in particular with regards to specialized medical care and the coverage of screenings and vaccinations. Finland has a very comprehensive screening program for breast cancer and as much as 84 per cent of women aged 50 to 69 years take part in screenings for breast cancer. The vaccination coverage of young children is very high in Finland and 99 per cent of the children under 2 years of age are vaccinated against whooping cough (pertussis) and measles.

The most significant public health problems are currently circulatory diseases, cancer, muscoloskeletal diseases and mental health problems. Emerging problems are obesity, chronic lung diseases and type 2 diabetes. Major causes of deaths in Finland are cardiovascular diseases, malignant tumors, dementia and alzheimers disease, respiratory diseases, alcohol related diseases and accidental poisoning by alcohol.

Suicide mortality in Finland has generally been one of the highest in Europe, but it has reduced to 18 per 100 000 population in 2005. One reason for this may be the large national suicide prevention project which was carried out between 1986 and 1996. The World Health Organization has compiled a list of countries by suicide rate

HIV/AIDS is not a major public health concern in Finland. The prevalence among adult population on 2009 was 0.1%. HIV/AIDS in Europe is much more common than in Finland, and the countries very near to Finland have much higher prevalence rates, due to increased travel HIV/AIDS rates in Finland may rise.

The aging population due to increased life-expectancy and lowered fertility rates brings new challenges to the Finnish health care system because there will be fewer people to pay for the health and social care of the quickly aging population. It is estimated that the old age dependency ratio in Finland will be the highest of all EU countries in 2025.