|
|
|
|
||
|
||
|
|
||
| SEARCH | SUBSCRIBE | ||
 |
More Americans are dying from disease of old ageBy: Reuters
WASHINGTON - Heart disease
and cancer are still the biggest killers, but Americans are surviving
longer and more are dying of diseases associated with old age, a
government report issued last week showed. Life expectancy for Americans has reached a new
high of 76.9 years, compared with 76.7 years in 1999, mostly because fewer
people are dying early from heart disease and cancer, the national Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Death rates from murder,
suicide, accidents, stroke, diabetes, chronic lower respiratory diseases,
chronic liver disease and AIDS were also down in 2000, the report said. More and more Americans
are lucky enough to die of old age, said Ari Minino, a demographer at the
CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, who helped write the report. ''What we are seeing is an
emergence and increase in illnesses that affect mostly the older
population,'' Minino said in a telephone interview. ''It's just because the
population in the United States is getting older.'' The report, based on
medical files of most of the reported deaths in the United States, finds
increases in deaths from Alzheimer's disease, influenza and pneumonia,
kidney disease, high blood pressure, and septicemia or blood infection. ''These are age-related
diseases,'' Minino said. ''There has been an increase in a condition that
debuted into our 15 leading causes of death list. It is called pneumonitis.'' ''It afflicts mostly the
elderly. It is an injury to the lungs caused sometimes by vomit and
sometimes by particles of food or liquid that are aspirated into the
lungs.'' The report finds that
2,404,598 people died in the United States in 2000, 13,199 more than the
year before. But because there were more Americans living overall, the
death rate fell. Out of every 100,000
Americans living in 2000, 873 died, down from 877 per 100,000 in 1999. The
age-adjusted death rate was even lower, at 872.4. ''If we want to compare death rates in, for instance, Florida, with death rates across country, because there are more old people in Florida, the comparison is not fair. Age-adjusted death rate removes that distorting effect ... so that we can make fairer comparisons,'' Minino said. Another piece of good news
in the report - fewer babies died. ''The preliminary infant mortality rate
in the US fell to its lowest level ever in 2000 - 6.9 infant deaths per
1,000 live births, down from a rate of 7.1 in 1999,'' the CDC said in a
statement. ''A healthy pregnancy is a
major factor in reducing the risk of infant death,'' the CDC's director,
Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, said in the statement. ''Timely prenatal care and
avoiding harmful behavior like smoking are two examples of how pregnant
mothers can protect the health of their infants.'' Men are still more likely
to die before women, with the life expectancy for a male born in 2000 now
being 74.1 and for a female 79.5 years. Heart disease and cancer are still the biggest killers of Americans. Heart disease killed more than 700,000 Americans last year and cancer killed more than 550,000. Among the other top 10 causes of death: - Stroke, which killed 166,000. - Chronic lower respiratory diseases, which killed 123,000. - Accidents, which killed nearly 94,000. - Diabetes, which killed nearly 69,000. - Influenza and pneumonia, which killed 67,000. - Alzheimer's, which killed more than 49,000. - Nephritis and other kidney conditions killed 37,000. - Septicemia killed more than 31,000. |
