Lancet
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Israel is a high-income country with an advanced health system and universal health-care insurance. Overall, the health status has improved steadily over recent decades. We examined differences in morbidity, mortality, and risk factors for selected non-communicable diseases (NCDs) between subpopulation groups. ⋯ These differences might be explained, at least in part, by gaps in social determinants of health. The Ministry of Health has developed comprehensive programmes to reduce these inequalities between the major population groups. Sustained coordinated multisectoral efforts are needed to achieve a greater impact and to address other social inequalities.
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Although Israel is still young in years, with relatively high birth rates and older people (individuals aged 65 years or older) constituting only about 11% of its population, the absolute number of older people is growing rapidly. Life expectancy is high, and increasing numbers of people are living to advanced old age (older than 85 years). ⋯ The unique demographic characteristics of the ageing society in Israel reflect cultural and multiethnic diversity, in addition to a high rate of immigration of older people. To meet the growing challenges, address disparities, and search for innovation will require planning and development of adequate services at the highest level.
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The principle that global human identity and dignity supersede other values is a broadly accepted conviction that guides practice and policies in the realm of human health in most of the world. An assessment of the level of success that Israel has achieved in health, in the face of formidable challenges, including rapid population growth, diverse and often divided ethnic affiliations, and existential security threats, leads us to propose that extension of this principle of global human identity and dignity, together with the objective of a decent society, as overriding values beyond health to other domains of human endeavour within Israel and in its relations with neighbouring peoples, represents an entirely achievable imperative. The result will be to further advance Israel's aspiration to serve as a model for societal decency with wide international acceptance and engagement. ⋯ We believe that by increasing the investment in the health sector, which includes investing in the societal, political, educational, and environmental underpinnings of health, far more can be achieved to move Israel to a model international leadership position in health care, education, and research, and turn health into an engine for economic wellbeing and development. Religious leadership in Israel, with its formidable political influence, can be harnessed to promote health initiatives in areas ranging from smoking cessation and healthy diet to organ transplantation, and most of all condemnation of hostility and its replacement by peaceful resolution of even the deepest conflicts. Most of all, this Series showed that there is an enormous opportunity, which Israel can lead, to leverage the universally accepted principles of health as a sanctuary against conflict and inequity, to achieve a brighter future for a deeply troubled region of the world.