Life expectancy rise: A sign of Bangladesh progress

Mostafijur Rahman Nasim: There is no doubt that Bangladesh is moving ahead through various ups and downs though the country has various problems including, natural disaster, political crisis and so on.

But, we have so many possibilities also. The world has started terming us emerging tigers. Yes, we are.

Recently risingbd.com has published a news that ‘Bangladeshis’ life expectancy reaches 70 yr’. According to the statistics of Bangladesh Bureau of Sample Vital Registration System (SVRS)-2013, the life expectancy of Bangladeshis rose to 70.1 years.

Thanks to the wider availability of health care and nutritious food and a successful immunization campaign, Bangladeshis are living longer than ever.

Earlier, the average life expectancy in 1971 was 39.93 years. It rose to 55.24 years in 1980 and to 60 in 1990. The latest statistics, published last year, show that average Bangladeshis now live up to 70 years of age.

The primary reason for this success is the availability of affordable healthcare in most villages. People have also become more health conscious than they were 40 years ago.

Advances against preventable diseases like diarrhoea, malaria, tuberculosis and cholera have also helped Bangladeshis live longer.

Bangladesh has proven that creating opportunities for the poor ultimately leads to better healthcare, nutrition and improved overall life expectancy.

The graph above shows many facets of the story. For Bangladeshis most painful must be the sudden drop in life expectancy in the early 1970s, a stark reminder of the tragedy of the Liberation War. Within just one decade life expectancy between the countries turned upside down from 42 years in India and 50 years in Bangladesh to merely 39 years in Bangladesh and 50 years in India. Relatedly the death rate in Bangladesh was much higher in that period.

The top 20 causes of death data and rankings for Bangladesh are- coronary heart disease, stroke, influenza & pneumonia, tuberculosis, lung disease, diarrhoeal diseases, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, lung cancers, other injuries, road traffic accidents, birth trauma, low birth weight, liver disease, breast cancer, kidney disease, suicide, oral cancer, fires and Alzheimer’s/dementia.

Though we still faces many problems, including poverty and malnutrition, as well as evolving challenges like rapid urbanization, an upsurge in chronic and non-communicable diseases, and increasing vulnerability to climate change but we are stepping ahead.

At present, over 12,000 community clinics are functioning across Bangladesh, treating, so far, nearly 170 million patients.

If we look towards the neighbouring countries like India or others, then we can see what type of significant development we have achieved.

 

 

The writer is a sub-editor of risingbd.com (English version) and he can be reached at [email protected].

 

risingbd/DHAKA/Jan 29, 2015/Nasim/Augustin Sujan