CRI听力:WHO Report: Health Gap Narrowing

A new report from the World Health Organization shows health gap between the richest and the poorest countries has narrowed dramatically over the past 2-decades.

CRI's Su Yi has more.

The annual health statistics report suggests the improvement in the poorest nations is mainly due to efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals, which will hit its deadline in less than 1-thounsand days.

Ties Boerma is the Manager of Measurement and Health Information Systems with the WHO.

"The gap between the best and the bottom is really closing. So the story that is really emerging is, even though we are not in 2015 yet, and we know that progress is really accelerated, we see dramatic improvement on all the health MDG indicators in the bottom countries."

The progress shown in the report includes the areas of reducing child and maternal deaths, improving nutrition as well as reducing deaths from HIV infection, tuberculosis and malaria.

The average life expectancy among Chinese people meanwhile is said to have hit 76 in 2011, which is higher than other developing countries.

Colin Mathers, a coordinator with the WHO, says economic growth may have contributed to this as well.

"You look at a place like China, there's been dramatic improvement in life expectancy over the 20 years. Partly associated with the economic growth that's occurred there and improving conditions but life expectancy for people in China now is higher than in some parts of eastern Europe. "

Global life expectancy at birth was 72 years for women and 68 years for men in 2011.

The World Health Organization says this "dramatic" gains show no sign of slowing down.

The WHO is attributing the trend to a rapid fall in child mortality over the past decade.

It also says both China and India have seen a seven-year jump in average life expectancy at birth since 1990.

Also the latest figures show countries at the top end of the scale, including Japan, Australia and Switzerland, continue to make improvements.

WHO's World Health Statistics contains data from 194 countries on a range of mortality, disease and health system indicators.

This includes life expectancy, illnesses and deaths from key diseases and health services.

Despite the current improvement rates, the report also says that some of poorest countries are still unlikely meet their Millennium Development Goals on certain health indicators, such as child mortality.

For CRI, I'm Su Yi.