On 20^th April, the World Health Organization (WHO) inaugurated the Health Inequality Data Repository (HIDR), the most comprehensive collection of publicly available disaggregated data and knowledge on population health and its determinants globally. The repository enables the tracking of health inequities across population groups and over time by breaking down data by group characteristics ranging from education level to ethnicity.

The data from the repository showed that the rich-poor gap in health service coverage, especially among women, newborns, and children in low- and middle-income countries, has nearly halved in the past decade. According to WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, eradicating wealth-related disparity in under-five mortality can prolong the lives of 1.8 million children in these countries.

The Repository, which is intended to be a one-stop shop for data on health disparity, can help in moving beyond just counting births and deaths to disaggregating health statistics by sex, age, education, area, and other factors.

However, disaggregated data for many health indicators are still unavailable, and when they are, they are usually broken down simply by sex and, to a lesser extent, by age and location of residence. For example, only 170 of the 320 indicators in WHOs gateway for health-related information, the Global Health Observatory, are disaggregated, with 116, or two-thirds, disaggregated exclusively by gender.

Despite its limitations, the existing disaggregated data demonstrates significant disparity trends. In high-income nations, men are more likely than women to have hypertension, while men and women have similar obesity rates. In low-income nations, women and men have equal rates of hypertension, but women have greater rates of obesity than men. 

(Source: https://health.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/who-releases-largest-global-collection-of-health-inequality-data/99657456 )