Tag: Asia

Obesity in Asia

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.genre.com/knowledge/publications/2023/april/ri23-1-en

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Figure 2 shows the incidence of cardiovascular disease and stroke in the male population.

This was derived from Gen Re’s Dread Disease experience study covering the period 2012–2015 and 2015–2019 for Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. As per the analysis from the leading insurance companies of the respective market, 43% of men in Singapore, 40% of men in Malaysia and 26% of men in Hong Kong had critical illness claims due to cardiovascular disease and stroke between 2015 and 2019. When compared with the 2012–2015 analysis, it was noted that there is an increase in claims by 3% in Singapore, 10% in Malaysia and 1% points in Hong Kong, which may be associated with overweight and obesity or simply an older portfolio.

Due to increases in body weight and medical complications, insurance companies may be confronted with increasing claims which will impact their profitability. To mitigate this cost, insurance companies may have to increase the premium so as to commensurate with this rising claim cost. This increase in price will impact on the healthy population.

Health insurance premium has doubled in the past 10 years, but it is unclear how much of this premium is sufficient to cover the financial burden of the obesity pandemic. The evaluation of existing and developing new health coverages related to obesity-related conditions is an important consideration for the profitability of the health insurance providers.14

Author(s): Bharath UP

Publication Date: 12 April 2023

Publication Site: Gen Re

What the Delta variant did to South-East Asia

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.economist.com/asia/what-the-delta-variant-did-to-south-east-asia/21804360

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As news circulated of a worrying new virus spreading in the Chinese city of Wuhan in the early days of 2020, experts worried that infections would quickly reach South-East Asia and overwhelm the region’s health-care systems. Thailand was one of the main destinations for Chinese tourists; the first case outside China was reported there on January 13th, 2020. The first known death from covid-19 outside China occurred in the Philippines. A Chinese tourist who had visited Indonesia from Wuhan tested positive on returning home, suggesting he took the virus on holiday with him.

Yet it was Iran and Italy that became the first global hotspots. America, the rest of Europe and Brazil were soon engulfed. India got walloped. All through 2020 and the early part of this year, South-East Asia remained relatively unscathed. By the start of June, the region of 668m people had reported fewer than 77,000 deaths from the disease. Britain, with a tenth as many people, had chalked up more than 128,000. South-East Asia, it seemed, had escaped the worst of the pandemic.

Publication Date: 7 Sept 2021

Publication Site: The Economist

Why a failure to vaccinate the world will put us all at risk

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/13/1018259/why-a-failure-to-vaccinate-the-world-will-put-us-all-at-risk/

Excerpt:

The supply to poorer countries is low mostly because the majority of the available vaccines have been purchased or promised to richer countries in North America and Europe. To address this vaccine inequity, a coalition of international organizations, including the World Health Organization and governments, created a nonprofit called Covax in April 2020.

The idea was to create a global supply of vaccines for 92 low- and middle-income countries. In December, the nonprofit announced that it had secured access to some 2 billion doses for 2021 through donations and commitments from some manufacturers, but it is unclear how many of those will actually be delivered this year. The problem becomes more complicated because many countries are both working through Covax and trying to secure deals with drug makers themselves—making it more challenging for Covax to make deals with those manufacturers at the same time. 

The group aims to vaccinate about 20% of the people in the world, focusing on hard-to-reach populations in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. To do so, it needs another $4.9 billion in addition to the $2.1 billion it has already raised. But there are other problems. The cheaper and easier-to-transport vaccines like the ones pledged by AstraZeneca have been slower to gain regulatory approval. Meanwhile, other companies seem less interested in pitching in: Doctors Without Borders found that only 2% of Pfizer’s global supply had been granted to Covax, and Moderna is still “in talks” with the organization.

Author(s): Katharine Gammon

Publication Date: 13 February 2021

Publication Site: MIT Technology Review

Tracking covid-19 excess deaths across countries

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker

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At the same time that covid-19 was devastating New York, cities in western Europe were also suffering severe outbreaks. Britain, Spain, Italy and Belgium have some of the highest national excess-death rates in the world, after adjusting for the size of their populations. France and Portugal locked down comparatively early, given the number of positive tests at the time. However, a second wave of covid-19 in winter has caused excess mortality to rise again across the region. (Some countries also recorded a small spike of non-covid fatalities during a heat wave in August.)

Date Accessed: 16 February 2021

Publication Site: The Economist