Friday, 23 September 2016

Why Britain is fifth healthier countries on earth

Britain

Britain has been ranked as fifth healthier nations on earth, according to figures from the United Nation.

Iceland came top, followed by Singapore, Sweden while The Central African Republic, Somalia, and South Sudan were bottom.

The USA came in at 28th place with its relatively poor performance mainly driven by deaths due to interpersonal violence, HIV, alcohol consumption, childhood obestiy and suicide.

The USA also did badly compared to other high-income countries on maternal, child, and neonatal mortality reflecting the large differences in access and quality of healthcare in the USA.

The figures were based on an evaluation of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Otherwise known as the Global Goals, these are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030.

The 17 Goals build on the successes of the Millennium Development Goals.

The SDGs are 17 universal goals, 169 targets, and 230 indicators set by the United Nations in 2015.

The SDGs follow and expand on the MDGs, which expired at the end of 2015.

Health is at the core of the SDGs-the third SDG aims to "ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages", and health-related indicators are also present among 11 of the other 16 goals.

The study published in The Lancet used data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors (GBD) study between 1990 and 2015 to rank nations.

It said many countries face substantial challenges for new indicators on childhood overweight, alcohol consumption, and intimate partner violence

Worldwide, good progress has been made towards some of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) since 2000, particularly in reducing under-5 and neonatal mortality, family planning, and the rollout of universal health care.

However, in areas beyond the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which came to an end in 2015, few inroads have been made.

For example, there have been only minimal improvements in hepatitis B incidence rates, while childhood obestiy, intimate partner violence, and harmful alcohol consumption have worsened.

The new estimates mark the end of the MDG era and provide the first independent analysis of performance on health-related SDGs.

The study is the first annual assessment of SDG health performance and was launched at a special event at the UN General Assembly in New York.

Professor Stephen Lim from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, Seattle, estimated the current status of 33 of the 47 health-related SDG-indicators.

Despite rapid economic growth, India was ranked 143rd, below Comoros, and Ghana

Prof Lim said: "Our study is a starting point for further investigation on how and why countries are under performing or performing well compared to the average.

"This will be an annual effort to ensure progress is maintained and that lessons from successes are learned and rapidly transferred to other countries where progress is less impressive."

The study found a number of countries already meeting health-related SDG targets in 2015, for instance, over three fifths of countries have already met the 2030 targets on reducing maternal (less than 70 deaths per 100000 live births) and child mortality (25 deaths per 1000 live births).

Yet no countries have met any of the nine targets on the full elimination of diseases like tuberculosis and HIV, or reducing prevalence of health outcomes like childhood overweight and intimate partner violence to 0%.

Given the modest progress in HIV and tuberculosis over the last 25 years, the vision of ending these epidemics in the next 15 years is highly unrealistic, the study warned.

At the other end of the spectrum, five countries performed much worse than expected, including Libya and Syria, mainly as a result of war and violence.


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