People around the world live longer, sicker lives: study

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There's good news and bad news in a new study published in the Lancet journal, which found that people around the world now live longer. The bad news? Many individuals live sicker lives for a longer period of time.

The NY Daily News reports that according to the study, global life expectancy at birth for males and females increased by 6.2 years from 65.3 in 1990 to 71.5 in 2013. Additionally, healthy life expectancy at birth rose by 5.4 years, from 56.9 in 1990 to 62.3 in 2013. Mortality and the impact of non-fatal conditions and chronic illnesses like heart and lung diseases, diabetes and serious injuries are taken into account when analyzing healthy life expectancy, as these minimizes the quality of life and imposes heavy cost and resource burdens.

The research studied 188 counties, and results revealed that in most countries, the changes in healthy life expectancy in the period between 1990 and 2013 were "significant and positive." In places such as Belize, Botswana and Seria, healthy life expectancy was relatively the same in 2013 as in 1990. In fact, life expectancy in Botswana and Belize decreased by 2 and 1.3 years, respectively.

Results also showed that in South Africa, Paraguay and Belarus, life expectancy has decreased, while in Lesotho and Swaziland, those who are born in 2013 could expect to live 10 less healthy years than those born 20 years earlier. Additionally, Lesotho had the world's lowest healthy life expectancy in 2014 at 42 years, in contrast to Japan's, which had the highest at 73.4 years. According to the study, since 1990, life expectancy in Nicaraguans and Cambodians increased to 14.7 and 13.9, respectively.

CBS News reports that in 2013, the leading causes of death globally were heart disease, lower respiratory infections, stroke, low back and neck pain, road injuries, diarrhea, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, premature birth complications, HIV/AIDS and malaria. Additionally, health decline due to HIV/AIDS increased by 341 percent between 1990 and 2013, but decreased by 24 percent since 2005, due to international efforts on battling the disease.

Reuters reports that according to Theo Vos, a professor at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington who led the study, "The world has made great progress in health, but now the challenge is to invest in finding more effective ways of preventing or treating the major causes of illness and disability."