The number of healthy life years in Bulgaria is estimated at 64 years for men and 67.5 years for women, analysis of Eurostat reads. Meanwhile, the number of healthy life years at birth was estimated at 64.2 years for women and 63.5 years for men in the EU. The healthy life years are 77% of the total life expectancy at birth for men and 81% of the life expectancy for women in the European Union.

According to researches of the Bulgarian national statistics, nearly 88% of the Bulgarians assess their health status as satisfactory, good or very good and only 2% of the people think their health is in a bad condition. Nearly 30% of the surveyed Bulgarians aged 65 or above assess their health condition as poor and only 1.5% of the people in this category think they are in good health. The number of healthy life years at birth is highest in Sweden- 73.3 years for women and 73 years for men. Latvia is at the bottom of the EU ranking. The number of healthy life years at birth in this country is 55 years for women and 52 years for men. 67% of the EU citizens aged 16 or above think they are in very good and good health. 23% of them assess their health status as satisfactory and 10% think they are in bad or very bad health.

Several months ago in October 2018 another analysis of Eurostat ascertained that Bulgaria is the country with lowest life expectancy in the whole European Union. According to this research, the average life expectancy in Bulgaria was 74.9 years, while the average life expectancy in the EU was 81 years. The lowest life expectancy in the whole European Union was registered in three Bulgarian regions Northwest Region (73.3 years), Southwest Region (74.4 years) and Central North Region (74.4 years)

The comparison of the two analyses of the European statistics shows that the Bulgarians live less than the other citizens of the EU, but the number of healthy years in this country is higher than the EU average

Written by: Stoimen Pavlov

English version: Kostadin Atanasov