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STORY: WHO / HEALTH STATISTICS 2014
TRT: 2.13
SOURCE: WHO
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH /NATS
DATELINE: 15 MAY 2014, GENEVA, SWTZERLAND
1. Close up, report’s cover page
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Ties Boerma, Director of the Department of Health Statistics and Information Systems, WHO :
“One of the major findings of this year’s World Health Statistics are the big gains in life expectancy that have taken place over the last two decades. So in 2012, a baby boy, can expect to live 68 years. A baby girl, 73 years. That is the average for the world. But there are major differences between countries.”
3. Cutaway, looking at the report
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Ties Boerma, Director of the Department of Health Statistics and Information Systems, WHO :
“At the top end, there are 9 countries that have a life expectancy of over 80 years and at the bottom end, there are 9 countries where the life expectancy on average less than 55 years, so there are still huge differences, but in the past decade on average, the increases have been six years for the world as a whole, in life expectancy.”
5. Cutaway, report
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Ties Boerma, Director of the Department of Health Statistics and Information Systems, WHO :
“In the low income countries, the gains have been larger than in the high income countries. 9 years on average in gains in life expectancy in the past two decades, compared to 4 years in the high income countries. So the gap is reducing, but it is still very big.”
7. Cutaway, report
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Ties Boerma, Director of the Department of Health Statistics and Information Systems, WHO :
“The biggest shift has been in measles mortality, 79% decrease, followed by diarrhoea, 40% decline, malaria, 32% decline, TB, 32% decline, pneumonia, 32% decline. But at the other end, we see stroke going up by 12%, road injuries going up 14%, and ischemic heart disease by 16%. So what we are seeing is a health transition that is going on everywhere in the world, at different pace, with different starting points, but it all requires countries to respond differently to a much more comprehensive picture through something like universal health coverage approaches.”
9. Cutaway, report
According to the World Health Statistics 2014 published today by the World Health Organization (WHO), on a global average children born in 2012 will live 6 years longer than those born in year 1990.
No matter where they live, people are living longer. WHO’s annual statistics report shows that low-income countries have made the greatest progress, with an average increase in life expectancy by 9 years from 1990 to 2012. The top six countries where life expectancy increased the most were Liberia which saw a 20-year increase (from 42 years in 1990 to 62 years in 2012) followed by Ethiopia (from 45 to 64 years), Maldives (58 to 77 years), Cambodia (54 to 72 years), Timor-Leste (50 to 66 years) and Rwanda (48 to 65 years).
On a global level, a girl who was born in 2012 can expect to live to around 73 years, and a boy to the age of 68.
If a boy was born in 2012 in a high-income country, he can expect to live to the age of 76 – 16 years longer than a boy born in a low-income country. For girls, the difference is even wider; a gap of 19 years separates life expectancy in high-income and low-income countries – 82 verses 63 years.
Everywhere in the world, women live longer than men. The gap between male and female life expectancy is greater in high-income countries where women live around six years longer than men. In low-income countries, the difference is around three years.
Women in Japan have the longest life expectancy in the world at 87 years, followed by Spain, Switzerland and Singapore. Female life expectancy in all the top 10 countries was 84 years or longer. Life expectancy among men is 80 years or more in nine countries, with the longest male life expectancy in Iceland, Switzerland and Australia.
Declining tobacco use was listed as a key factor in helping people live longer in several countries.
At the other end of the scale, life expectancy for both men and women is still less than 55 years in nine sub-Saharan African countries – Angola, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho, Mozambique, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
The top three causes premature deaths are coronary heart disease, lower respiratory infections such as pneumonia and stroke.
Dr Boerma said report recommended that the countries have to change their responses toward causes of premature deaths since traditional causes like measles, diarrhea, malaria, pneumonia and TB are showing declining, while stroke, road injuries and heat diseases are on the rise.
Only one-third of all deaths worldwide are recorded in civil registries along with cause-of-death information.
