We may complain an awful lot about pollution and our excessively overweight population but, according to the respected medical journal The Lancet, Malta is the world’s 14th healthiest place in the entire world to live. 

In an extensive study published this week, The Lancet analysed living conditions in no less than 188 counties using the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as guideposts to measure the quality of life in 33 areas such as poverty, clean water, education, disease, violence, road injuries, pollution and mortality rates.

The new study, which was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, also placed Malta as the eighth-healthiest place to live in the European Union.

In terms of having achieved the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, Malta came in with a rank of 80, compared with the world’s highest ranking of 85 – shared jointly by Iceland, Singapore and Sweden. The SDGs are a successor to the Millennium Development Goals, a UN initiative that from 2000 to 2015 lifted a billion people out of extreme poverty, halved the mortality of children younger than five years old, and raised by about 60 per cent the number of births attended to by a skilled health worker. 

Malta received its highest marks (with scores of 100) in areas where Third World countries score lowest, such as disaster, growth stunting, wasting (acute malnutrition), malaria, neglected tropical diseases, road injuries, water, sanitation, and war.

But Malta received particularly low ratings more First World problems such as being overweight (36), HIV (54), alcohol (62), smoking (54), occupational risk burden (70), and average PM2.5 – particulate matter air pollution – (59).

In this week’s new analysis, possibly the most comprehensive ever, Iceland and Sweden share the top slot with Singapore.

Related figures published in Malta this week, through the Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) survey, showed that during 2015, Malta’s monetary at-risk-of-poverty rate stood at 16.3 per cent and the country’s at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion rate stood at 22.4 per cent.

The at-risk-of-poverty rate among Maltese aged below 18 years of age stood at 23.4 per cent, and for those 65 years of age and older the rate stood at 21 per cent. Those living in single parent households were found to be more susceptible to being at-risk-of-poverty with a rate of 45.3 per cent.

The at-risk-of-poverty rate was found to decrease with increasing household work intensity, with 69.1 per cent of those living in households with very low work intensity were at-risk-of-poverty compared with only 1.9 per cent for those living in households with very high work intensity.

The severe material deprivation rate stood at 8.1 per cent. More than 40 per cent were living in households which claimed that not all the household members could afford to pay for a one-week annual holiday away from home. In addition, 21.1 per cent said that they could not afford to face unexpected financial expenses, while 13.9 per cent said that they could not afford to keep their home adequately warm in winter.

The Lancet’s full study – “Measuring the health-related Sustainable Development Goals in 188 countries: a baseline analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015” – can be accessed free of charge thanks to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, at: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)31467-2/fulltext

Reacting, Health Minister Chris Fearne said the report was encouraging and also highlighted areas where improvements can be made.

“The report also showed that, when taking the demographics of all 188 countries into consideration, Malta had the best improvement. This shows that we are on the right path and, together with the workers, NGOs and professionals we are offering a better health service,” Mr Fearne said.