“We need to invest in people when they are young so they maintain a healthy lifestyle,” says health economist Phua Kai Hong of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. “The poor health before death must be shortened… so people live to a ripe old age and have a very quick period of disease and ‘conk off’.”
SINGAPORE (July 26): Singapore has the highest life expectancy among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, with average life expectancy increasing from 76.1 years in 1990 to 84.8 years in 2017. But more than a decade of that extended lifespan is likely to be spent in poor health.
These statistics were released in a recent research paper produced by the Ministry of Health and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. Titled “The Burden of Disease in Singapore”, it is part of the World Health Organization’s global studies on the topic.
