Global Life Spans Continue To Increase, WHO Reports

[HuffingtonPost]

By Tom Miles                

GENEVA, May 15 (Reuters) - People are living longer than  ever and "dramatic" gains in life expectancy show no sign of  slowing down, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.                

"The global life expectancy has increased from 64 years in  1990 to 70 years in 2011. That's dramatic," Colin Mathers,  coordinator for mortality and burden of disease at the WHO, said  as the organisation launched its annual world health statistics  report.                

"That's an average increase in life expectancy of 8 hours a  day over the last 20 years."                

Global life expectancy at birth was 72 years for women and  68 years for men in 2011. A 60-year-old man could expect to live  another 19 years and a woman of the same age could count on  another 21 years, two years more than in 1990.                

Much of the global increase is due to a rapid fall in child  mortality over the past decade, as well as improvements in China  and India, which have both seen a seven-year jump in average  life expectancy at birth since 1990.                

Life expectancy has fallen in North Korea, South Africa,  Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Libya since 1990, a year that serves as  the baseline for the United Nations Millennium Development  Goals.                

But everywhere else saw an improvement, or at least no  change, in life expectancy at birth.                

Even countries where people live longest have managed to  keep eking out a few more years, suggesting that humans have not  yet reached a natural limit to their age. That has surprised  some experts.                

"In 1990 a 60 year-old (in a high income country) had a life  expectancy of 21 years, and in 2011 it was 24 years. I think  there were very few people who predicted that in 1990," said  Ties Boerma, director of health statistics and informatics.                

"So there's no real evidence that the increase is not  continuing."                

Mathers said previous research had shown life expectancy  grew by 2-2.5 years per decade in high-income countries during  the 20th century, and the question of whether the gains might  slow down was the subject of "a huge debate among the  demographers".                

The latest figures show countries at the top end of the life  expectancy scale, such as Japan, Australia and Switzerland,  continue to make improvements.                

"Presumably there will be some slowing down eventually  unless gene therapy and all sorts of new scientific  breakthroughs change that. Global warming and conflict and other  things could change it also," Mathers said.                

"Some people argue that increasing rates of obesity will  start to impact on life expectancy but so far we haven't seen  that. The improvements in other risk factors have more than  outweighed any adverse effect of increasing levels of obesity in  high income countries."         (Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Via: HuffingtonPost