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Sri Lanka ranks above peers in Healthcare, India hits rock bottom
Mar 07, 201307:31 AM
Among peers and neighbors Sri Lanka is performing the best when it comes to the health of its citizens. Whether it is life expectancy, mortality due to all causes, under-five mortality or mortality among men and women between 15 and 49 years, on most counts, Sri Lanka ranks way above India, Brazil, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
This was revealed in the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors 2010 Study (GBD 2010), a collaborative project led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. The study details the causes of death and disability ” across age groups and genders” for 187 countries around the world.
Sri Lanka and China fight for the top spot in the region on most parameters followed by Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal. India and Pakistan figure at the bottom with India often beating Pakistan in the race to the bottom, even if marginally so.
For the entire developed world, in fact, for most of the world barring the poorer countries, the biggest killers were ischemic heart disease or stroke. For the poorer countries by 2010, the biggest killers were lower respiratory diseases, malaria and HIV. In the 15-49 age group, i.e. barring children and elderly, suicide and TB were the biggest killers for South Asia while road accidents replaced suicide in the same age group by 2010 in China. In the developed world, suicide and road injury followed by ischemic heart disease seemed to be the biggest killers in this age group. In large swathes of Africa, HIV/AIDS was the biggest killer for the 15-49 age group.
