Health gains around the world mask a rising tide of illness, disability and death due to non-communicable disease, a major study has found.
Seven out of every 10 deaths in 2015 were caused by conditions such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, chronic kidney damage and Alzheimer’s.
The more positive news was that death rates from communicable diseases including HIV/AIDS and malaria had fallen sharply.
We continue to see countries – including the US – that are far less healthy than they should be given their resources
However, while this had helped to increase life expectancy, people were living more of their lives struggling with illness and disability.
The Global Burden of Disease study published in The Lancet medical journal gathered data on 249 causes of death, 315 diseases and injuries and 79 risk factors in 195 countries and territories between 1990 and 2015.
The findings showed that healthy life expectancy had increased steadily in 191 countries, adding an average 6.1 years to people’s life spans over the course of 15 years.
But overall life expectancy had risen further, by 10.1 years, suggesting that by 2015 people were spending a greater proportion of their lives in ill-health.
At the end of the study period, an estimated 1.2 million deaths were due to HIV/AIDS, a reduction of a third since 2005.In 2015, 40 million global deaths –70 per cent of the total – were due to non-communicable diseases.
The total number of annual deaths had increased from about 48 million in 1990 to almost 56 million in 2015.
At the end of the study period, an estimated 1.2 million deaths were due to HIV/AIDS, a reduction of a third since 2005. Malaria deaths had fallen by 37 per cent since 2005, to 730,500 in 2015.
Study coordinator Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle, US, said: “Development drives, but does not determine health.
“We see countries that have improved far faster than can be explained by income, education or fertility. And we also continue to see countries – including the US – that are far less healthy than they should be given their resources.”