LONDON (AP)
-- Nearly everywhere around the world, people are living longer and
fewer children are dying. But increasingly, people are grappling with
the diseases and disabilities of modern life, according to the most
expansive global look so far at life expectancy and the biggest health
threats.
The last comprehensive study was in
1990 and the top health problem then was the death of children under 5 -
more than 10 million each year. Since then, campaigns to vaccinate kids
against diseases like polio and measles have reduced the number of
children dying to about 7 million.
Malnutrition
was once the main health threat for children. Now, everywhere except
Africa, they are much more likely to overeat than to starve.
With
more children surviving, chronic illnesses and disabilities that strike
later in life are taking a bigger toll, the research said. High blood
pressure has become the leading health risk worldwide, followed by
smoking and alcohol.
"The biggest contributor
to the global health burden isn't premature (deaths), but chronic
diseases, injuries, mental health conditions and all the bone and joint
diseases," said one of the study leaders, Christopher Murray, director
of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of
Washington.
In developed countries, such
conditions now account for more than half of the health problems, fueled
by an aging population. While life expectancy is climbing nearly
everywhere, so too are the number of years people will live with things
like vision or hearing loss and mental health issues like depression.
The
research appears in seven papers published online Thursday by the
journal Lancet. More than 480 researchers in 50 countries gathered data
up to 2010 from surveys, censuses and past studies. They used
statistical modeling to fill in the gaps for countries with little
information. The series was mainly paid for by the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation.
As in 1990, Japan topped the
life expectancy list in 2010, with 79 for men and 86 for women. In the
U.S. that year, life expectancy for men was 76 and for women, 81.
The
research found wide variations in what's killing people around the
world. Some of the most striking findings highlighted by the
researchers: - Homicide is the No. 3 killer of men in Latin
America; it ranks 20th worldwide. In the U.S., it is the 21st cause of
death in men, and in Western Europe, 57th.
-
While suicide ranks globally as the 21st leading killer, it is as high
as the ninth top cause of death in women across Asia's "suicide belt,"
from India to China. Suicide ranks 14th in North America and 15th in
Western Europe.
- In people aged 15-49, diabetes is a bigger killer in Africa than in Western Europe (8.8 deaths versus 1 death per 100,000).
-
Central and Southeast Asia have the highest rates of fatal stroke in
young adults at about 15 cases per 100,000 deaths. In North America, the
rate is about 3 per 100,000.
Globally, heart
disease and stroke remain the top killers. Reflecting an older
population, lung cancer moved to the 5th cause of death globally, while
other cancers including those of the liver, stomach and colon are also
in the top 20. AIDS jumped from the 35th cause of death in 1990 to the
sixth leading cause two decades later.
While
chronic diseases are killing more people nearly everywhere, the overall
trend is the opposite in Africa, where illnesses like AIDS, malaria and
tuberculosis are still major threats. And experts warn again shifting
too much of the focus away from those ailments.
"It's
the nature of infectious disease epidemics that if you turn away from
them, they will crop right back up," said Jennifer Cohn, a medical
coordinator at Doctors Without Borders.
Still,
she acknowledged the need to address the surge of other health problems
across Africa. Cohn said the agency was considering ways to treat
things like heart disease and diabetes. "The way we treat HIV could be a
good model for chronic care," she said.
Others said more concrete information is needed before making any big changes to public health policies.
"We
have to take this data with some grains of salt," said Sandy
Cairncross, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine.
He said the information in
some of the Lancet research was too thin and didn't fully consider all
the relevant health risk factors.
"We're getting a better picture, but it's still incomplete," he said.
Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
