A WHO report shows that life expectancy difference between the worlds’s poorest and richest countries can be more than 40 years.

The World Health Organization found huge inefficiencies and inequalities when it examined primary health care systems around the world.

The report urges for action to tackle unfairness and reinforce primary care.

WHO director-general, Margaret Chan says: “we have to take proper action and it is needed to focus on primary care to affect significant change.”

“If our world is out of balance in health issues, it is neither stable nor secure.” She added.

The report shows that the estimated 58 million women out of those 136 million who will give birth this year will not attain proper medical assistance during and after childbirth and put their lives at greater risk.

In middle and low-income countries, more than half of all health care expenditure for 5.6 billion people is through out-of-pocket payments and it would push many people below the line of poverty.

The report also shows that big differences occur within the countries as well as sometimes within individual cities.

For example, in high-income area of Nairobi, the under-five mortality rate is below 15 per 1,000 and in a slum of the same city, these rates are 254 per 1,000.