Australian life span is 80.3 for men, 84.4 for women

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) released on Tuesday its latest biennial report card on Australia’s health. Life expectancy has become longer, but cancer has overtaken cardiovascular diseases as leading cause of death.

An Australian baby born between 2012 and 2014 is expected to live until he is 80.3 years old, while a baby girl is expected to live up to 84.4 years, reports The Age. Although many Australians consider themselves in good health, half of all Australians have at least one chronic ailment, says Barry Sandison, chief executive and director of AIHW.

Among the chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular ailments, diabetes and asthma in 2014-15, cancer overtook cardiovascular diseases as the top killer. Cancer rates have been going up since 1982 and in 2016, 130,000 new cases are expected to be diagnosed.

But more Australians are surviving cancer, with mortality rate declining by 22 percent since 1982, reports The Australian. In the past 30 years, death rates for coronary heart ailments – the leading single cause of death in Australia – dropped by 75 percent as more people quit smoking and there are improvements in treatment.

Smoking rate have gone down by almost 50 percent since 1991 and even drinking is at the lowest amount of alcohol per person since the early 1960s. However, Australia is losing the battle of the bulge as proportion of obese or overweight adults rose to 63 percent from 56 percent since 1995. It translates into an average of an extra four kilos.

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