Tuesday, March 05, 2013

A long and healthy life?

People in the UK enjoy fewer years of good health before they die than the citizens of most comparable European countries as well as Australia and Canada, a major report shows. The UK ranked 12th out of 19 countries of similar affluence in 2010 in terms of healthy life expectancy at birth, according to a detailed analysis from the Global Burden of Disease data collected by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle.

While life expectancy has improved by 4.2 years in the UK over the two decades, other countries have improved faster. In 2010, Spain topped the league. Its people could expect 70.9 years of healthy life – before disease and disability began to take a toll. Second came Italy, with 70.2 years and third was Australia, on 70.1 years. In the UK, we can expect 68.6 healthy years of life.

The leading causes of death in the UK have changed very little over the last 20 years, says the report.
Source

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