Singaporeans have another reason to cheer as they are ranked third in the world for average life expectancy, according to the latest World Health Statistics Report compiled by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The country has also fared well in other statistics including healthy life expectancy, availability of health services and treatments, proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel, lowest road traffic mortality rate and other parameters.
People of Singapore live longer as compared to most nations and they are only behind Japan and Switzerland. The average life expectancy in Singapore is 83.1 years while Japan, which has topped the list consistently for the past three decades, has average life expectancy of 83.7 years. The figure for Switzerland is 83.4 years.
Singapore has come second in the world on the parameter of healthy life expectancy which refers to the number of years people live in full health. Japan has topped the list with the healthy life expectancy of 74.9 years followed by Singapore with 73.9 years.
Another interesting feature of the report is that women live longer than men across the world. The global average was 69.1 years for men and 73.8 years for women. In Singapore, women could expect to live for 86.1 years (second in the world), while the average male’s expectancy was 80.1 years (10th).
The performance of Singapore was also commendable as it ranked high on the report in many categories. For instance, the WHO found that Singapore’s gross domestic expenditure on research and development (R&D) in health and medical sciences as a percentage of gross domestic product was topped only by South Korea.
Singapore also jointly topped the world for proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel, and was first for lowest mortality rate attributed to unintentional poisoning.
In addition to this, Singapore was third globally for the lowest road traffic mortality rate, and took fourth position for the lowest mortality rate attributed to air pollution, lowest mortality rate attributed to cardiovascular or chronic respiratory diseases, and lowest mortality rate attributed to unsafe water or lack of hygiene.
The World Health Statistics Report is one of the WHO’s flagship publications, with data compiled from 194 countries. Other health indicators covered include mortality and disease rates, the availability of health services and treatments, the level of financial investment in health, and risk factors and behaviours that affect health.