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Health and care

Role of government: Direct Shaped directly by public agencies.

72.4Access · regional mean

48.2Experience · regional mean

+24.2Access–experience gap

0.22How closely access and experience move together across countries (correlation)

0.84How closely this domain follows the overall index (correlation)

What the survey asks: access

Self-rated health; limitation of work or daily activity by physical health.

What the survey asks: experience

Mood over the past four weeks; feelings about physical and mental health; views on opportunities to improve health and on the range available.

Findings

Health shows the largest access–experience gap of any domain: access averages 72.4 and experience 48.2. Access exceeds experience in nine states, by 15.1 points in Kuwait to 46.1 in Yemen (78.8 and 32.7); Tunisia is the exception (76.8 and 78.4).

Experience ranks the states: Tunisia (78.4), Morocco (57.4) and Egypt (50.9) lead; Yemen (32.7), Iraq (36.9), Qatar (39.0) and Saudi Arabia (39.8) trail.

What the gap may indicate (inference, not measured)The access items record health status, which is high among respondents everywhere, rather than access to care. The gap therefore separates good health from satisfaction with care and with opportunities to improve health. In the Gulf this is consistent with problems in the experience of care; in Iraq and Yemen with low expectations of the health system. Both readings are inferences.

Administrative implicationHealth administrations can take patient experience and perceived opportunity to improve health as performance measures; self-rated health does not discriminate between states.

Citizens voice

“The presence of doctors in all areas”
Egypt

“The presence of government hospitals”
Yemen

What respondents said they would change. Open-ended answers as transcribed in English by the survey team, lightly edited for punctuation; attributed by country only.

Figure 1Health and care: the gap is widest in Yemen; experience runs ahead in Tunisia

AccessExperienceDotted lines: regional averages

Yemen78.8 · 32.7 Saudi Arabia74.3 · 39.8 Qatar73.3 · 39.0 Iraq64.8 · 36.9 Jordan73.8 · 49.8 Lebanon71.6 · 48.1 Morocco77.8 · 57.4 Egypt68.6 · 50.9 Kuwait63.9 · 48.8 Tunisia76.8 · 78.4

Sorted by the gap between access and experience.

A-SCOPE MENA, Arab Access and Experience Dataset 2026, ten states, N = 1,861. Wave 1 · Release 1.0 · September 2026.Image (PNG)

Figure 2Health and care: access and experience are only weakly related

Provision–experience mismatchMaterial-access deficitAdministrative interface deficitCapacity under crisisIntermediate alignment

Dashed line: access equals experienceDotted lines: regional averages

A-SCOPE MENA, Arab Access and Experience Dataset 2026, ten states, N = 1,861. Wave 1 · Release 1.0 · September 2026.Image (PNG)