France heads WHO's league table of health systems

If you are going to be ill, the best place to be is France—the country ranked first in an analysis of the world's healthcare systems carried out by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Among major countries, France was followed by Italy, Spain, Oman, Austria, and Japan, with several small countries (including San Marino, Andorra, Malta, and Singapore) rated among the top 10 healthcare providers.

The analysis, which used five performance indicators to measure health systems, showed that it is not what you spend on health care but how you spend the resources availableto you that is important.

Despite spending more of its gross domestic product on health than any other country (13.7%), the United States ranked only 37 out of …