13.1. Differences in selected mortality indicators among EU Member States

The data reported in this Report, mainly concerning incidence and prevalence of many non-communicable diseases and associated mortality and morbidity data, clearly show major health differences occurring among different EU Member States in some cases consisting in orders of magnitude (for mortality data see Table 13.3). Large differences have also been reported for life expectancy in different EU countries.

Table 13.1. Standardised Death Rates for selected non-communicable causes in EU 27

These considerable differences clearly indicate that considerable improvements are achievable in a number of different sectors and that each EU Member State has a different pathway in pursuing and achieving these improvements.

Moreover, the collaboration at EU level is of fundamental importance to speed up these processes and improve their efficacy and effectiveness at national level. In fact, in such a framework, a European collaboration is absolutely essential to understand better the root causes of health (i.e. health determinants) and to further develop innovative policies to deal with them. Similar conclusions are also reached by comparing the large differences among population groups with different socio-economic statuses even in countries characterised by higher health-achievements. In any case, there is no evidence that we are approaching an upper limit of life expectancy or of health in many different sectors.