Singapore Among World’s Healthiest Places To Live

Iceland, Singapore and Sweden are the healthiest out of 188 countries studied in the 2015 Global Burden of Disease Study.

AsianScientist (Sep. 26, 2016) – Singapore has emerged as the healthiest place in the world to live, according to an analysis of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease Study. The report, published in The Lancet, evaluates the performance of 188 countries based on 33 health-related indicators outlined in the United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The SDGs were launched in 2015 as an extension of the Millennium Development Goals. The 17 goals and 169 targets outline the progress the UN hopes to make towards improving the quality of life by 2030. The Lancet report is the first independent analysis on each country’s standing since the SDGs were announced.

Clinching the top spot with a score of 85 were Iceland, Singapore and Sweden. These three countries scored the maximum points on indicators such as disaster, war, water, sanitation, malaria and neglected tropical diseases, mirroring the overall progress in these areas across the board. However, the analysis also highlighted that childhood obesity, alcohol consumption and death caused by violence as areas in need of improvement.

The next seven highest scoring Asian countries were Japan (76), Taiwan (74), South Korea (73), Malaysia (69), Sri Lanka (62), Indonesia and China (both 60), all scoring above the global median of 59.3. The lowest scoring Asian countries were India (42), Pakistan (38), Bangladesh (38) and Nepal (36), while the poorest performer worldwide was the Central Africa Republic which had a score of 20.

“We now need to look to those countries that have seen strong progress to find out what they are doing right and how it can be applied more broadly,” said study lead author Professor Stephen Lim of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.



The article can be found at: Lim et al. (2016) Measuring the Health-Related Sustainable Development Goals in 188 Countries: a Baseline Analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015.

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