Maltese women with the highest healthy life expectancy in the EU – report

During the first annual meeting of the European Joint Action on Healthy Life Years (EHLEIS) held last week in Paris, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) launched the latest report on life expectancy and healthy life years for all European Union (EU) countries based on 2010 figures.

Maltese women appear to have the highest healthy life expectancy in the whole of the EU, even if overall life expectancy for females is not the highest in Europe. 

Even so, at 83.6 years, it is only just over a year short of France and Spain, at the top of the league with 85.3 years.

This implies that Maltese women are expected to live 85.7% of their life in good health.

As for Maltese men life expectancy is at 79.1 years second only to Sweden with 79.6 years.  Healthy life expectancy is calculated to be 70.2 years, second only to Sweden's 71.7 years. 

Men in Malta are expected to live 88.6% of their life in good health, which is ahead of the majority of European member states.

Reacting to these figures, parliamentary secretary Matio Galea welcomed that data and said that "this proved that government's work for the elderly was yielding good results."

Healthy life expectancy refers to the number of years that one expects to live without disability, as compared to overall life expectancy, that reflects only the expected number of years of life, without taking into account any years spent in bad health. 

The former is the only health-related structural indicator in the EU as it is considered to be an overarching measure of good health in a country. 

It is based on life expectancy and on disability data extracted from the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) that, in Malta, is run by the National Statistics Office.