Violence, preventable diseases and traffic accidents are to blame for a widening of the youth mortality gap between the developed and developing world, according to a new Guardian analysis of the most recent World Health Organisation (WHO) data.
The most dangerous country in the world to be a young person between aged 15-29 is Sierra Leone. With one youth in every 150 estimated to have died in 2015. The youth mortality rate is 671 per 100,000. That figure is almost 100 people higher than the next country on the list, Syria, at 579 per 100,000.
The WHO analysis finds that young people in the United States are six times as likely to be murdered as their British counterparts. They are also more than three times as likely to be killed in a car crash, and twice as likely to commit suicide or overdose on drugs. Self-harm is the most common cause of death for young people in the UK.
Globally, the mortality rate for young people decreased 21% between 2000 and 2015, with HIV-related deaths in particular falling significantly. Yet the gap between developing and developed countries has widened in that period, from 2.2 up to 2.4 times higher.
The explanation is that, while youth mortality rates are falling fastest in the world’s most and least developed countries, the decline is considerably slower in “mid-tier” countries such as Brazil and Venezuela.
Syria is the only non-African country to feature among the 25 countries with the highest youth mortality rates.
In Nigeria, the fourth worst-performing country, approximately 235,000 youths are estimated to have died in 2015. In absolute terms, this was the second highest number of young deaths in the world after India, whose population is seven times greater.
Road accidents are the most common cause of death of young people throughout the world. The WHO estimates that 350,000 young people died in 2015 as a result of traffic-related injuries.
In Sierra Leone, 74 out of 100,000 people died as a result of pregnancy. The global average is less than nine per 100,000. About 1,800 young people died in Somalia due to diarrhoea, a cause of death that’s been almost completely eradicated in more developed countries.
The number of HIV-related deaths has halved in ten years, but still takes a heavy toll in countries such as Lesotho, where it kills 218 of every 100,000 young people.
The National Youth Commission refused to comment on the WHO or Guardian information.
SV/24/8/17
By Sylvia Villa
Friday August 25, 2017.
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