The International Longevity Centre (ILC) have published a report – Years lost: boosting life expectancy through preventative health interventions – which finds a number of trends in life expectancy. Over the past decades, life expectancy has significantly improved across the G20, and across the G20, there has been a shift from cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of death to cancer, which overtook cardiovascular conditions in 2016 due to improvements in prevention, detection and treatment. It also finds that neurological conditions, including dementia, are now the leading cause of death in richer countries, including the US, UK and Saudi Arabia. However, the report also warns that while overall improvements in life expectancy are promising, too many years are still lost due to preventable causes. The ILC is calling on governments across the G20 to invest at least 6 per cent of their health budgets on preventive services such as vaccines, screenings and early intervention. Read Report
