Life expectancy up in the 21st century

Life expectancy has dramatically increased despite a more polluted environment and the proliferation of chemically treated foods due to rapid development and industrialization.

A 2001 World Population Data Sheet has revealed that world life expectancy is now 67 years compared to the 63 years recorded in 1998. World life expectancy at birth for men is 65 years, and for women, 69 years.

In the more developed countries, the total life expectancy at birth is 75 years, 72 years for men and 79 for women. In less developed regions, total life expectancy at birth is 64. Male life expectancy is 63 years, and for women, 66 years.

Based on a new way of calculating healthy life expectancy developed by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Japanese have the longest healthy life expectancy of 74.5 years among 191 countries versus less than the 26 years for the lowest-ranking country of Sierra Leone.

According to the WHO study, women now live longer and healthier. In the early 1900s, the gap between male and female life expectancy was two to three years in richer countries. By 1999, women were living on average seven to eight years more than men in these countries.

In the Philippines, life expectancy was noted at 67 years – men live till about 64 years and women, 70 years, on the average. Some experts attribute the increase in life expectancy to the decline in infant mortality rate in the 20th century. But while declining infant mortality explains the bulk of the increase in life expectancy, it is not enough to account for all of it.

Dr. Thomas Stuttaford wrote in The Times newspaper in May 2002: "The increase in life expectancy did not only stem from doctors, improved training and skills, but in better nutrition, decent housing, adequate sanitation and civilized working hours."

He believes that while in the 19th century and in first half of the 20th century, doctors may be responsible for the population’s longer life, the much-maligned pharmaceutical industry has made the major contribution of longevity in the latter 20th and 21th centuries with the introduction of life-saving vaccines and drugs.

UK-based GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is just one of the many pharmaceutical companies that have invested in research and development to contribute to man’s longevity. It has an R&D investment of $4 billion a year with concentration on the therapeutic areas of respiratory, anti-infectives, alimentary and metabolic diseases, CNS (central nervous system) and vaccines.