By Caroline Wilbert
WebMD Health News

Reviewed By Louise Chang, MD

Aug. 28, 2008 �?A girl born today can expect to live to be either more than 80 years old or less than 45 depending on what country she calls home, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report.

The report addresses health inequities because of economic status �?worldwide as well as within individual countries. It calls for closing health inequities within a generation.

"Inequities in health, avoidable health inequities, arise because of the circumstances in which people grow, live, work and age, and the systems put in place to deal with illness," the report states. "The conditions in which people live and die are, in turn, shaped by political, social and economic forces."

WHO set up the Commission on Social Determinants of Health in 2005 "to marshal the evidence on what can be done to promote health equity and to foster a global movement to achieve it." WHO is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations.

The report includes these examples of health differences around the world:

• 80% of people with diabetes live in low- or middle-income countries.
  
  
• In Afghanistan, the lifetime risk of maternal death is one in eight; in Sweden the risk is one in 17,400.
  
  
• In the U.S., 886,202 deaths would have been prevented between 1991 and 2000 if African-Americans had the same mortality rates as whites.