For everyone on the planet, living a long, healthy, and full life is an expectation. But in order to gauge the health of the world’s population, a comprehensive picture is needed of the illnesses and disabilities that can kill us.
The Global Burden of Disease Study – 2013 (GBD) is a useful tool that quantifies health data from hundreds of diseases, injuries and risk factors, enabling policymakers and health care systems in 188 countries to make decisions in aligning their health care system protocols to best serve the population.
Gizmag.com is reporting that the GBD study for 2013, conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, and in partnership with researchers in countries worldwide, came to the conclusion that life expectancy worldwide has increased by six years for both sexes, up from 65.3 in 1990 to 71.5 in 2013.
However, there is a down-side to an increased life expectancy in today’s world. People are also living longer with illnesses and disabilities. This brings into focus something called the “healthy life expectancy.” The scientific measure of this parameter of life expectancy has only increased five years, telling researchers it is not keeping up with overall basic life expectancy.
Countries where life expectancy is highest, include Japan, Singapore, Andorra, Iceland, Cyprus, Israel, France, Italy, South Korea and Canada. At the bottom of the list, we find Lesotho, Swaziland, Central African Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Chad, South Sudan and Zambia.
Factors that contribute to life expectancy around the globe
To calculate the healthy life expectancy of the world’s population, the impact of non-fatal illnesses and injuries was taken into consideration. Since the increase in a healthy life expectancy wasn’t as great as the overall life expectancy, it was obvious that while people are living longer, they are doing so while ill.
The primary causes of bad health include ischemic heart disease, lower respiratory infections, stroke, low back and neck pain, and road injuries. Men seem to lead in the number of illnesses resulting from road injuries, while depression-related disorders are more common in women.
As an interesting case study, HIV/AIDS continues to be a communicable disease in Africa. The number of infections worldwide increased 341.5% between 1990 and 2013, but while improved medications are more widely available in prolonging life by nearly 24 percent, HIV/AIDS is still the largest cause of health loss in the world.
Socio-economic conditions such as income, age and education do play a significant role in life expectancy, and more so in healthy life expectancy in many countries. With large aging populations around the world, there will be an added stress put on governments and health care systems.
“The world has made great progress in health, but now the challenge is to invest in finding more effective ways of preventing or treating the major causes of illness and disability,” said the study’s lead author, Professor Theo Vos of IHME.
