Jakarta Globe – AFP, Dec 18, 2014
Paris. People around the world lived on average to a ripe old age of 71.5 in 2013, up from 65.3 in 1990, a study said on Thursday, noting the gains came despite big increases in liver cancer and chronic kidney deaths.
Paris. People around the world lived on average to a ripe old age of 71.5 in 2013, up from 65.3 in 1990, a study said on Thursday, noting the gains came despite big increases in liver cancer and chronic kidney deaths.
Global life
expectancy rose by 5.8 years in men and 6.6 years in women between 1990 and
2013.
The
increase was attributed to falling death rates from cancers (down by 15
percent) and cardiovascular disease (down by 22 percent) in high-income regions
of the world.
In less
affluent regions, it was attributed to rapidly declining death rates for
diarrhea, lower respiratory tract infections and neonatal disorders, the study
published in British health journal The Lancet said.
Only one
region, sub-Saharan Africa, did not benefit from the upward trend with deaths
from HIV/AIDS resulting in a drop in average life expectancy of five years.
“The
progress we are seeing against a variety of illnesses and injuries is good,
even remarkable, but we can and must do even better,” lead author Dr
Christopher Murray, professor of Global Health at the University of Washington,
said.
“The huge
increase in collective action and funding given to the major infectious
diseases such as diarrhea, measles, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and malaria has had
a real impact,” he added.
The study
found, however, that death rates from some major chronic conditions were on the
rise, including liver cancer caused by hepatitis C (up 125 percent since 1990),
drug use disorders (up 63 percent), chronic kidney disease (up 37 percent),
diabetes (up 9 percent) and pancreatic cancer (up 7 percent.
The Global
Burden of Disease Study 2013, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, also found that some low-income countries such as Nepal, Rwanda,
Ethiopia, Niger, the Maldives, Timor-Leste and Iran had seen exceptional gains
over the past 23 years with life expectancy in those countries rising by more
than 12 years for both sexes.
In India,
too, good progress had been made on life expectancy, with a rise of almost
seven years for men and just over 10 years for women between 1990 and 2013.
But the
study noted that suicide was a growing public health problem in India with half
the world’s suicide deaths alone occurring in India or China.
And despite
dramatic drops in under-five deaths from 7.6 million in 1990 to 3.7 million in
2013, the study also noted that lower respiratory tract infections, malaria,
and diarrheal disease were still in the top five global causes of child deaths,
killing almost two million children a year.
Agence France-Presse
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