The 16 countries with the world’s best healthcare systems

Luxembourg City in the winter.Barbara Tasch

The Legatum Institute, a London-based research institute released its 10th annual global Prosperity Index in November, a huge survey that ranks the most prosperous countries in the world.

The organisation compares 104 variables to come up with its list, splitting those variables into nine subindexes. One of the big components of the ranking is how healthy a country’s people are.

Health is measured by three key components by the Legatum Institute: a country’s basic mental and physical health, health infrastructure, and the availability of preventative care.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the countries that have the best scores in the Prosperity Index, and therefore rank as the world’s healthiest, are generally big, developed economies with large amounts of resources.

Britain — whose NHS pioneered free at the point of use healthcare globally — misses out on this list, finishing 20th in the Legatum Institute’s health sub-index.

Take a look at the top 16 countries below: