Sick humanity
Scientists: 95% of the world's population cannot be considered healthy people
An international team of doctors conducted a kind of census of the world's population and concluded that about 95% of the world's inhabitants cannot be recognized as healthy people, and about a third of them suffer from five or more diseases at the same time, according to an article published in the Lancet journal (Global, regional, and national incident, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 301 acute and chronic diseases and injuries in 188 countries, 1990-2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 – VM).
"Common and at the same time preventable sources of health loss, such as serious disorders of the musculoskeletal system and mental and behavioral disorders, do not receive the attention from health services that they deserve. Solving these problems will require a shift in priorities in the work of healthcare systems across the Earth – now we must not only help people live to old age, but also stay healthy," said Theodor Vos from the University of Washington (in a press release from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation As death rates decline, nonfatal diseases and injuries take a bigger toll on health worldwide – VM).
Vos and his colleagues came to this conclusion when summarizing the results of the GBD international project, in which doctors tried to assess the susceptibility of humanity to various diseases at the global level and determine how many years of life they take away from us on average.
The main conclusion of this study was that the proportion of sick people in the societies of the world has continued to grow rapidly over the past 20-25 years, while mortality has not increased so much.
As a result, almost 95% of people on our planet suffer from one or another disease, and about a third of them are carriers of five or more diseases at once. In total, humanity loses about 730 million years of life every year due to diseases, both deadly and relatively harmless.
The situation has changed for the worse compared to the end of the last century for two reasons – the general aging of the world's population and the increase in the number of problems that arise already at the birth of a child. According to doctors, only a small proportion of elderly people living today aged 80-90 years have experienced similar problems in the past, whereas today about 60% of children in third world countries are already born sick.
In Europe, most of the health problems arise as a result of falling elderly and adults on stairs, slippery floors, ice and other dangerous surfaces, and in developing countries diabetes and injuries sustained during military conflicts, as well as parasitic worms, play a leading role.
The most common diseases are the "big three" – back pain, depression and anemia, from which on average every sixth inhabitant of the Earth suffers. In addition, the top ten includes tooth decay, diabetes, migraines and neck pain.
According to Vos and his colleagues, such data indicate that it is time for doctors to switch from fighting death to fighting diseases that take, as it turned out, a comparable number of years of life from the population of the planet.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru09.06.2015