Analytics, Demography, EU – Baltic States, Medicine, Society

International Internet Magazine. Baltic States news & analytics Friday, 26.04.2024, 04:57

33.7% deaths in EU could have been avoided in 2013

BC, Tallinn, 25.05.2016.Print version
The number of deaths in Estonia in 2013 that could be considered as premature, as they could have been avoided in the light of medical knowledge and technology, made up 42.5% of the total number of deaths that year, figures published by Eurostat indicate, cites LETA/BNS. The indicator puts Estonia in fifth place from the bottom among EU member states, better only than Romania, 49.4%, Latvia, 48.5%, Lithuania, 45.4%, and Slovakia, 44.6%.

The average ratio of such deaths in EU member states was 33.7%. The share was below 30% in France, 23.8%, ahead of Denmark, 27.1%, Belgium, 27.5%, and the Netherlands, 29.1%.

 

Altogether 2,770 people aged less than 75 died of avoidable causes in Estonia in 2013.

 

The concept of avoidable mortality is based on the idea that certain deaths, for specific age groups and from specific diseases, could be "'avoided" – meaning they would not have occurred at this stage – if there had been timely and effective health care in place.

 

While the amenable mortality indicator is not meant to be a definite or unique measurement of the quality of health care in the member states, it provides some indication of the quality and performance of healthcare policies in a country, Eurostat said in a press release.

 

In the EU in 2013, heart attacks, being the cause of 32% of total avoidable deaths of persons aged less than 75, accounted by far for the largest share of potentially avoidable deaths. They were followed by strokes, 16%, colorectal cancers, 12%, breast cancers, 9%, hypertensive diseases, 5%, and pneumonia, 4%.





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