Thursday 17 November 2016

On the road to 63

By ELIZABETH MERAB
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Every day, 3,400 children are born in Kenya. However, only half of these will live to the current life expectancy age of 65. While this is a troubling reality, the chances of living a long life in Kenya today are better than in the past two decades, when life expectancy was capped at less than 60 years.
A study published last month in the scientific journal The Lancet reported that Kenya’s population, just like the rest of the world’s, is gaining years, and that means there is something the country is doing right.
Today, Kenyans are living longer than they did 25 years ago, mainly due to large drops in death rates, particularly in the last 10 years, for diseases such as HIV/Aids, malaria, and diarrhoea. A slight drop in maternal deaths in the country — from 371 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 338 in 2015 — has also been hailed for this increase in life expectancy http://www.nation.co.ke/On-the-road-to-63/1148-3444716-14do05h/