Australians
may be living longer, but they are also spending more time living with illness,
according to a new global study.
Australians may be living longer, but the
growing incidence of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and back pain mean we’re
spending more time living with illness, reveals the latest Global Burden of
Disease Study.
The study, which took five years to complete
and involved more than 400 researchers in 50 countries, found infectious
diseases and malnutrition cause fewer deaths and illnesses than they did 20
years ago, but non-communicable diseases, such as heart disease and cancer,
have become the dominant causes of death and disability worldwide.
Since 1970, men and women worldwide have
gained slightly more than ten years of life expectancy overall, but they spend
more years living with injury and illness.
The work was led by the Institute for Health
Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, with key collaborating
institutions including the University of Queensland.
The researchers investigated a range of major
risk factors for disease and estimated overall exposure to these risk factors,
comparing 2010 with 2005 and 1990.
In 2010, the two most important risk factors
were high blood pressure, estimated to be responsible for 9.4 million deaths,
and tobacco smoking, including second hand smoke, (responsible for 6.3 million
deaths).
Alcohol use was the third most important risk
factor, thought to be responsible for 5.0 million deaths.
Overall, women can expect to live for more
years in better health, with women in four countries (Japan, Singapore, South
Korea, and Spain) having a healthy life expectancy greater than 70 years in 2010.
There were no countries where this was the
case for men, and in only three countries (Afghanistan, Jordan, and Mali) was
men’s healthy life expectancy greater than women’s.
“Health means more than simply delaying death
or increasing life expectancy at birth. Although life expectancy is increasing
globally, we need to understand whether or not people are living those extra
years in good health,” said Professor Joshua Salomon of Harvard School of
Public Health, one of the study’s authors.
“Using the measure of Healthy Life
Expectancy, building on new information and analysis from the Global Burden of
Disease Study 2010, we’ve been able to gain new insights into patterns across
countries and over time. This information is important for people living in
aging societies and for policy-makers thinking about long-term healthcare
needs,” Professor Salomon said.
The study reports the staggering finding that
on average, every person in the world experiences an 11 percent reduction in
their overall health each year due to diseases and injuries.
“This is an extraordinary and ground-breaking
series of studies on the global burden of diseases,” said Dr. David Burgner,
clinician and scientist in pediatric infectious diseases at the Murdoch
Children’s Research Institute.
“They use disability-adjusted life years
(DALYs) – a measure of the number of years lost due to disability, illness, or
death to express the burden of disease and years living with disability to
quantify the consequences of common diseases on long term disability.”
Studies such as this are essential if
countries are to be better informed about their health priorities and how these
are changing, said Professor Alan Lopez from the University of Queensland’s
School of Population Health.
“We know that dozens of countries have taken
the methodology of (the study) and applied it to their own situation to better
inform local health planning and policies,” Professor Lopez said.
Yet the world is virtually unprepared to cope
with the rapid expansion of non-communicable diseases in low and middle-income
countries, said Rob Moodie, professor of public health at the University of
Melbourne’s School of Public Health.
“Less than three percent of development
assistance in health is currently allocated to NCDs, yet they cause over half
the burden of disease,” Professor Moodie said.
“We are also unprepared to deal with the two
biggest preventable risk factors: hypertension and smoking – both have very
cheap and easily implemented control strategies. And the globe has very limited
capacity to deal with the industrial vectors of these NCDs – the giant
transnational tobacco, junk food and drink, and alcohol industries.”
Dr. Burgner said that while mortality and the
burden of disease from infection in children had dropped it was still a huge
issue. “I don’t think we should lose sight of that.”
He added that more work was required in
Australia to collect high quality population based data, with Western Australia
currently the only state doing it comprehensively.
“We really should be pushing for it across
Australia to get a handle on what our health problems are. That would allow us
to target prevention and services to bring the greatest benefit to the most
people, most cost effectively.”
This article was originally published
at The
Conversation. Read the original article
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