Peru

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Peru

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Basic Information About Peru

For a very complete look at general statistics for Peru look to the World Factbook http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/pe.html

Health Information (1)

The following information is by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress under the Country Studies/Area Handbook Program. As it is a temporary on-line searchable source it is not possible to bookmark or hyperlink to the site. Below is some of the information from the country study.

In the early 1990s, Peru was hit by a cholera epidemic, which highlighted longstanding health care problems. Review of health statistics amply illustrates Peru's vulnerability to disease and the uneven distribution of resources to combat it. The most and the best of the health facilities were concentrated in metropolitan Lima, followed by the principal older coastal cities, including Arequipa, and the rest of the country. The differences among these regions were not trivial. Whereas Lima had a doctor for every 400 persons on average, and other coastal areas had a ratio of one doctor for every 2,000, the highland departments had one doctor for every 12,000 persons (see table 9, Appendix). The same levels of difference applied with respect to hospital beds, nurses, and all the medical specialties.

In the early 1990s, over 25 percent of urban residences and over 90 percent of rural residences lacked basic potable water and sewerage. Thus, the population has been inevitably exposed to a wide variety of waterborne diseases. The incidence of disease not surprisingly reflected the inequities evidenced in the health system: the leading causes of death by infectious diseases have varied from year to year, but invariably the principal ones have been respiratory infections, gastroenteritis, common colds, malaria, tuberculosis, influenza, measles, chicken pox, and whooping cough. The cholera epidemic, which began in 1990 and claimed international headlines, ranked well down the list of causes for death behind these others, which have been endemic and basically taken for granted. In a typical case, during one year in Huaylas District, which had a small clinic and often was fortunate enough to have a doctor in residence, 40 percent of all deaths registered were children below four years of age, who died because of a regional influenza epidemic.

Although Peru's infant mortality rate per 1,000 live births dropped from 130 to 80 over a 26-year period (1965-91), the rate in 1991 was still over twice the rate of Colombia and four times the rate of Chile. The mortality rate for children under 5 was also brought down greatly, from 233 per 1,000 in 1960 to 107 per 1,000 in 1991. Both measures for 1991 still exceeded all the other Latin American countries except Bolivia and Haiti. The only direct measure of social welfare that deteriorated was nutrition: calorie consumption per capita fell 5 percent from the average for 1964-66 to 1984-86. In 1988 calorie consumption was 2,269, as compared with 2,328 in 1987. Because calorie consumption levels generally parallel income levels, the decrease must have been concentrated at the level of the extremely poor (see table 10, Appendix).

Peru's lack of general well-being was further suggested by the nation's high and growing dependence on foreign food since 1975 through direct imports, which had increased 300 percent, and food assistance programs, which showed a tenfold increment. The United States has been by far the largest provider of food assistance to Peru through its multiple programs administered under the Food for Peace (Public Law 480) projects of the United States Agency for International Development (AID). During the 1980s, food aid amounted to over 50 percent of all United States economic assistance. The aid was delivered as maternal and child health assistance and food-for-work programs administered by CARE (Cooperative for American Relief), church-related private voluntary organizations, or by direct sale to the Peruvian government for urban market resale.

Peru's totally inadequate social security system, operated by the Peruvian Institute of Social Security (Instituto Peruano de Seguridad Social--IPSS), did not remain exempt from the Fujimori government's privatization policy. As a result of two legislative decrees passed in November 1991, Peru's system for providing social security retirement and health benefits underwent significant modification. The changes were similar to those made by the military government of Chile in the early 1980s, when employees were given a choice of either remaining with the existing system or joining private systems set up on an individual capitalization basis. The Fujimori government decided to adopt the Chilean social security model almost completely. The stated objectives were to permit open market competition, alleviate the government's financial burden by having it shared by the private sector, improve coverage and the quality of benefits, and provide wider access to other social sectors. Private Pension Funds Administrators (Administradoras de Fondos de Pensiones--AFPs) were expected to begin operating in June 1993. A presidential decree in December 1992 ended the IPSS's monopoly on pensions. This provided a boost to Peru's small and underdeveloped capital market by allowing the AFPs to invest in bonds issued by the government or Central Reserve Bank (Banco Central de Reservas--BCR, also known as Central Bank) as well as in companies.

The cholera and other health and social issues in Peru were interrelated closely with the country's steadily worsening environmental conditions. The high levels of pollution in large sectors of Lima, Chimbote, and other coastal centers had resulted from uncontrolled dumping of industrial, automotive, and domestic wastes that had created a gaseous atmosphere. The loss of irrigated coastal farmland to urban sprawl, erosion of highland farms, and the clear-cutting of Amazonian forest all have conspired to impoverish the nation's most valuable natural resources and further exacerbate social dilemmas. Although Peru is endowed with perhaps the widest range of resources in South America, somehow they have never been coherently or effectively utilized to construct a balanced and progressive society. The irony of Peru's condition was captured long ago in the characterization of the nation as being a "pauper sitting on a throne of gold." How to put the gold in the pauper's pockets without destroying the chair on which to sit is a puzzle that Peruvians and their international supporters have yet to solve.

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Health Information (2)

(source: PAHO)

Poverty Levels

Based on two methods of measuring poverty—the poverty line and unmet basic needs—it is estimated that around one-half of Peruvian families live in poverty. According to the definition that has been consistently applied in the ENNIV surveys since 1985, poverty is the inability to cover the cost of a basic market basket of food and other goods and services. In 1994, 20% of the national population was living in extreme poverty. The percentage was even higher in rural areas of the coastal, mountain, and jungle regions (66%, 68%, and 70%, respectively). Extreme poverty is defined as the inability to cover the cost of a market basket consisting only of food that meets minimum nutritional requirements. 53.9% of Peruvian households have at least one unmet basic need. In rural areas, the proportion was 88.2%, while in urban areas, it was 39.2%. In 16 of the 25 departments, more than 60% of households had at least one unmet basic need.

In the jungle regions 74% of the indigenous population live in poverty and more than half live in extreme poverty.

Birth Rate

The total fertility rate was 3.5 children per woman nationwide (2.8 in urban areas, 5.6 in rural areas, and 2.5 in the Lima metropolitan area).

Mortality

According to the 1993 census, infant mortality was 59.0 per 1,000 live births nationally, and ranged from 22.9 per 1,000 in Callao to 113.9 per 1,000 in Huancavelica. For the period 1995–2000, this indicator was estimated at 45.0 per 1,000 live births. The 1996 ENDES survey revealed a rate of 42.8 per 1,000. Neonatal mortality, according to the same source, was 25.0 per 1,000 live births. In 1992 the leading cause of death in children under 1 year of age was communicable diseases (39.8%), followed by certain conditions originating in the perinatal period (33.9%). Within the group of communicable diseases, acute respiratory infections (26.6%) and intestinal infectious diseases (11.1%) accounted for the largest proportions of deaths. Among children aged 1–4, communicable diseases were the leading cause of death (66.7%), followed by external causes (7.3%). Among the communicable diseases, respiratory infections caused 28.5% of all deaths and intestinal infectious diseases caused 25.1%.

For more detailed health data please go the the PAHO website : http://www.paho.org/English/SHA/prflper.htm

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