Global health statistics at the end of 2018 reveal both positive and negative trends.
According to a December 28, 2018 NPR article, some of the negatives include:
- There are more than a million cases of cholera in Yemen.
- In the U.S., life expectancy has been decreasing for three years. It was 78.6 in 2017, down from 78.9 in 2014, likely spurred by deaths from opioids and suicides.
- In 2016, 3.6 million people died because they didn’t have access to health care, and 5 million died because the quality of care they received was poor.
- Pollution contributed to the deaths of roughly 9.9 million people in 2015—three times more than the toll from AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined.
But there’s some positive news, too. For instance, child mortality rates for children under age 5 have been falling for years—in 2017, the rate was 39.1 deaths per 1,000 live births, down from 216 per 1,000 in 1950. Also, guinea worm disease, an incapacitating disease that once affected millions in Africa and Asia, is close to being eradicated. As of October 1, 2018, there were only 25 cases reported worldwide.
One of the strongest positives is that people are living longer. Worldwide life expectancy in 2016 was 72 years, up from 66.5 in 2000.
“If that’s not a bottom line reason for optimism, I don’t know what is,” said Ashish Jha, K.T. Li Professor of Global Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.
Read the NPR article: The Health Of The World In 2018, By The Numbers