The United Nations published an upbeat message on the state of the world's health today: things will get better. Humanity is thriving with life expectancy expected to rise for women and men in most regions of the world in the coming 25 years and the risk of death falling among children, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says in its annual report.
Of the 15,000 babies born every hour in 1995, half will live to celebrate their 75th birthday in 2070 and many can look forward to taking their place among the planet's increasing number of centenarians in the 21st century.
Among challenges ahead, WHO says the world will become even greyer with an expected 88 per cent jump in the number of old people in the next 25 years as women have fewer babies - an average 2.3 compared to almost three in 1995 and five in 1955.
This will cause an imbalance in which the young will have to do more to provide for an ageing population with the old/young ratio expected to almost double to 31 people aged over 65 for every 100 aged under 20 by 2025 compared to 16:100 now, it says. One in every 10 people in the world will be aged over 65 in 2025, by which time their number will have soared to 800 million compared to 390 million now, the report said. The number of French centenarians alone was expected to hit 150,000 by 2050 compared to just 200 in 1950.
Looking ahead, the biggest risks facing humans are not bird flu or ebola or flesh-eating bacteria but lifestyle diseases caused by sedentary living, excessive diets and smoking - and low back pain and rheumatoid arthritis too. Non-communicable diseases that strike mostly the affluent minority are now a major killer in developing states, it said.
In 1997, heart and circulatory diseases accounted for 24 per cent of all deaths in the developing world compared to 46 per cent in the developed world, while cancer was to blame for 21 per cent of total deaths in the developed world and 9 per cent of all deaths in the developing world.
Despite advances in modern medicine, the WHO said nearly half of all deaths worldwide in 1998, or an estimated 21 million, will be among people aged under 50 - among them 10 million children who will never see their fifth birthday and seven million men and women in their most productive years.
Premature deaths account for 76 per cent of mortality in Africa compared with 15 per cent in western Europe.