Life expectancy in the United States is down

In the United States, life expectancy has further declined in 2017, the US government announced Thursday in a series of reports of a nation still under the influence of drugs and suicide bombing.

Data help extend the longest decline in life expectancy in a century, an unregistered performance in the United States from 1915 to 1918. This four-year period included World War I and a pandemic flu that killed 675,000 people. in the United States and maybe 50 million worldwide.

Experts in public health and demographics have reacted with concern to the publication of the annual statistics of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), considered a reliable thermometer for the health of a society. In most developed countries, life expectancy has been steadily increasing for decades.

"I think the health situation in the United States is very dark," said Joshua Sharfstein.

To find out more: The Paraná will have the third highest life expectancy of the country until 2060,, vice-dean of public health practice and community participation in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "Life expectancy is improving in many parts of the world, it should not go down in the United States."

"After three years of stagnation and decline, what are we doing now?", Asked S.V. Subramanian, Professor of Population Health and Geography at T.H. Chan, Harvard. "We say that's the new normal? Or can we say that it's a treatable problem?"

Overall, Americans born in 2017 can expect to live 78.6 years, one-tenth less than the 2016 estimate, according to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. Life expectancy for men is 76.1 years, one tenth less than in 2016. For women, it is 81.1 years old and remains unchanged from the previous year. last year.

The Opioid Crisis

Drug overdoses set a new annual record in 2017, reaching 70,237, up from 63,632 the previous year, the government announced in a report. Only the epidemic of opiates (such as fentanyl and heroin as well as controlled narcotics) killed 47,600 people in 2017. It is also a record number , mainly because of the increase in the number of deaths due to fentanyl.

Since 1999, the number of drug overdose deaths has more than quadrupled. Deaths attributed to opioids were almost six times higher in 2017 than in 1999.

The number of deaths due to badgesics has not increased in 2017. There have been 14,495 overdose deaths attributed to narcotics, such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, and to 3,194 by methadone. is used as an badgesic. These totals are virtually identical to those of 2016. The number of heroin deaths, 15,482, has also not increased compared to the previous year.

Robert Anderson, Chief of the Mortality Statistics Division, Center for Health Statistics, said stabilizing the number of deaths from prescription drugs may reflect the small impact of efforts in recent years to limit diversion badgesics to users and traffickers in the streets. These measures include controlled drug monitoring programs that help prevent addicts from obtaining multiple prescriptions for "prescriptions".

Others have mentioned programs that could also have helped: The antidote for overdose called naloxone has been made more widely available in many places; Rhode Island has made efforts to educate drug addicts upon release from prison, a time when they are particularly vulnerable to overdose; and Vermont and other states have beefed up their treatment programs. States that have expanded their Medicaid programs have also begun to offer more treatments to users.

Anderson stated that preliminary data for the first four months of 2018 indicate a threshold and perhaps a slight decrease in drug overdose deaths.

But Sharfstein, a former Maryland health secretary, said that heroin numbers reveal that fentanyl is pushing the drug away from the illicit market in some places.

"The opioid market was completely absorbed by fentanyl," Sharfstein said. There is a solution: discover how New York ended its Cracowland

In fact, new data show that the number of deaths related to illicit fentanyl has further increased from 19 413 in 2016 to 28 466 in 2017.

Despite a sharp increase, this 47% increase was lower than that recorded between 2015 and 2016, when the number of deaths from fentanyl and their badogues more than doubled. (The total number of opioid-related deaths is less than the sum of categories because some people die with multiple drugs in their system.)

Geographic disparities in overdose deaths continued in 2017. Virginia Western is once again at the top of the rankings. overdoses, with 57.8 deaths per 100,000 population, followed by Ohio, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. Nebraska, on the other hand, reported only 8.1 drug-related deaths per 100,000 population.

Other Diseases

Among other factors decreasing life expectancy include the increase in deaths from influenza last winter and the increase in deaths due chronic diseases of the lower respiratory tract, Alzheimer's disease, stroke and suicide. Heart disease, the leading cause of death among Americans, down since 2011, has continued to stabilize.

Cancer deaths have continued their long and steady downward trend.

The CDC publishes its health statistics report every December. The 2017 report is the third consecutive report to show a decrease in life expectancy.

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Nearly a year later, the agency combines yearly Medicare data and additional information. In the past two years this has resulted in minor adjustments to the total number of life expectancies.

According to the revised measure, life expectancy in 2015 and 2016 remained stable at 78.7%, a decrease of 78.9% in 2014. Any revision of the estimates of 78.6 years in 2017 will be carried out next year.

Suicides

In a third report, the government reported the steady increase in the number of deaths by suicide, which has been steadily increasing since 1999 and has been increasing since 2006.

The most notable is Growing gap between urban and rural Americans. . Suicide rates in more rural counties are almost double those in more urban counties.

Overall, suicides increased by a third between 1999 and 2017, according to the report. In urban America, the rate is 11.1 per 100,000 inhabitants; in the most rural areas of the country, is 20 per 100,000.

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Various factors determine suicide rates, but they may explain their higher prevalence in some areas. Rural areas is access to weapons, said Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford University.

"The highest suicide rates in rural areas are due to the fact that nearly 60% of rural households own guns compared to less than half of the houses in urban areas," Humphreys wrote in a statement. email. "Easily available lethal means are a major risk factor for suicide."

Sharfstein stated that the most regrettable aspect of a crisis is that decision-makers know which approaches make a difference, such as medical badistance to addicts and the increased availability of mental health services in the states where they work. are at fault.

"So we are frustrated that some things could save many lives," he said, "and we can not make these services available."