People lose more ‘years of healthy life’ to illness now than they did in the 1990s, global survey reports
FROM THE WEBMD ARCHIVES
By Robert Preidt
HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, June 8, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A new global tally of health finds that only about 4 percent of people worldwide had no health problems in 2013, while a third — about 2.3 billion people — had more than five health problems.
And the situation is getting worse, not better: Worldwide, the proportion of years of healthy life people lost because of illness (rather than simply dying earlier) rose from 21 percent in 1990 to 31 percent in 2013, according to the Global Burden of Disease study.
The growing number of elderly people also means that the number of people who will be living with health problems will rise rapidly over coming decades, the researchers warned.
The study involves data from 188 countries and looks at more than 300 illnesses and injuries, according to a news release from The Lancet, which published the findings June 8. The study is the largest analysis of trends in health around the world for the years 1990 to 2013, the journal said.
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