Health researchers (in full-time equivalent) per million inhabitants, by WHO Region (first set of charts)

Published: January 2021

The number of researchers in the fields of health and medical sciences ("health researchers") are collected, by country, from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

These numbers are analysed below using the data for the most recent year since 2010. (Note: not all countries have reported data on this indicator).

See also:

Health researchers (in full-time equivalent) per million inhabitants, by income group (second set of charts)
Health researchers (in full-time equivalent), as a proportion of all researchers

What you see | Data sources | Current version

What you see

The data visualization above compares the number of full-time equivalent (FTE)1 health researchers per million inhabitants by country and by WHO region. Regional weighted averages and medians for FTE health researchers (chart A) and females as a proportion of all health researchers (top right) are provided (To see the data using either of the two calculation methods, select the desired method from the two options above the charts). The regional weighted averages and medians are derived from 81 Member States for which data are available. Data need to be interpreted cautiously because of the number of missing observations, especially from countries known to develop and publish health research.

Points to note:

  • Disparities in scientific capacity between countries are significant (chart B).
  • The WHO European region has approximately 12 times more FTE health researchers per million inhabitants (239) in weighted average than the WHO African region (21) (chart A).
  • Based on the data from the 73 countries, the proportions of female health researchers range from approximately 53% in the European region to 40% in the African region on weighted averages (Click on a region in chart A to see the region-specific %--top right)

To explore the data further

  • Select a WHO region in chart A to filter countries within that region: relevant countries will appear in chart B; regional weighted averages or medians are symbolized by the dashed vertical line in chart B. For example:
    • Selecting only Europe (chart A), and then hovering the cursor on the country bar of interest (chart B), shows that the Netherlands has approximately 3 times more FTE health researchers per million inhabitants (755) than the regional weighted average (239) while Bosnia and Herzegovina has 9.2 times less (26) than the regional weighted average.
  • Click "undo" or "reset" (near the bottom of the page) or click the same element again to undo a selection.

Data sources

1 The full-time equivalent (FTE) of R&D personnel is defined as the ratio of working hours actually spent on R&D during a specific reference period (usually a calendar year) divided by the total number of hours conventionally worked in the same period by an individual or by a group.