SA’s ‘health gap’ is still one of the world’s worst, says new study
SA has one of the world’s greatest misalignments between development and health progress, according to The Lancet’s latest Global Burden of Disease study, published on Friday. The country is one of only a handful in which the number of years a person can expect to live in good health has declined since 1990, as disease and injury take their toll. The top five causes of premature death in SA are HIV, lower respiratory tract infections, road injuries, inter-personal violence and tuberculosis. "The problem with South Africa is that it was overwhelmed by HIV," said one of the study’s collaborators Charles Wisonge, director of the Cochrane Centre at the Medical Research Council. "There has been tremendous progress, but is still lagging," he said in a telephone interview. Life expectancy for men rose 9.5 years over the past decade, to reach 59.2 years in 2016, while for women it improved by 13.6 years to reach 65.5 years over the same period. But a South African man born in 2016 would enj...
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