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TAMPA: Life expectancy in the United States has dropped further as the number of drug overdose deaths has continued to increase – it has claimed more than 70,000 lives in 2017 – and that Suicides have increased, a US government report said Thursday.
The drug overdose rate increased 9.6% over 2016, while suicides increased 3.7%, said the National Center for Health Statistics of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. disease (CDC).
As a result, the average lifespan in America dropped to "78.6 years, a decrease of 0.1 year from 2016," the report says.
The data comes as the United States grapples with a vast epidemic of opioids, fueled by addiction to prescription painkillers and illicit drugs such as heroin and synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
"The latest data from the CDC show that life expectancy in the United States has declined in recent years. Tragically, this worrying trend is largely due to deaths from drug overdose and suicide, "said CDC Director Robert Redfield.
"Life expectancy gives us insight into the general state of health of the country. These disturbing statistics remind us that we are losing too many Americans, too early and too often, to preventable diseases. "
A trend "very worrying"
Overdoses were a major factor when life expectancy in the United States declined slightly in 2015 for the first time in decades.
The CDC reported another decline in 2016, although this data was later revised to indicate a flat year, said Robert Anderson, head of the mortality statistics branch at NCHS.
Overall, statistics show a "downward trend in life expectancy since 2014," a period in which Americans lost 0.3 years of life, he said. declared to AFP, describing the trend as "very worrying".
Anderson said declines like this had not been seen since the 1918 flu pandemic and the First World War – although these losses were larger.
The peak of the HIV / AIDS epidemic in the 1980s also resulted in a decrease in life expectancy nationwide.
"We are a developed country, we have a lot of resources, we should have a growing life expectancy and not a decreasing life expectancy," he added.
Canadians live an average of three years longer than Americans. Japan has the longest life expectancy in the world, with nearly 84 years.
"Difficult to digest"
The number of deaths from drug overdose caused by synthetic opioids such as fentanyl – which killed musicians Prince and Tom Petty – and tramadol increased by 45% between 2016 and 2017.
The rate of death related to heroin was seven times higher than in 1999.
The CDC figures showed that a total of 70,237 people died of an overdose in 2017.
Most of these deaths were unintentional.
The rise – while spectacular, at almost 10% in one year – was about half of the increase recorded a year earlier.
In 2016, 21.6% more people died of overdoses than in 2015.
Preliminary data released separately by the government for the first part of 2018 also showed a stabilization in the number of overdose deaths.
At the health conference in October, Health and Social Services Secretary Alex Azar said "the seemingly unrelenting trend of increasing overdose deaths seems finally to be moving in the right direction."
However, experts have recommended to interpret the results with caution, so that the epidemic of opioids has reached its peak or is about to end.
"It is heartening to see that the trajectory of this beginning is definitely diminishing," said Harshal Kirane, director of addiction services at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City, who did not participate in the collection. data.
"What would be a sign of a real change would be when the total number of overdose deaths decreases each year," he told AFP.
"Seventy thousand deaths are difficult to digest in any way as a positive result."
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