Health progress in Africa leaves more people living with disabilities: rehabilitation is the next challenge
Originally published by The Conversation – Articles (AFRICA) — Read the original article →
Conversations around health progress in Africa usually focus on lives saved. And rightly so. Across the continent, people are living longer than they did a generation ago. Advances in prevention, treatment and public health have reduced deaths from many major diseases and improved survival for millions. But there is another side to this success story that receives far less attention: quality of life.
As a physiotherapist and rehabilitation researcher, I am interested not only in whether people survive illness, but also in how they live afterwards. The latest findings from the Global Burden of Disease 2023 study, to which I contributed, suggest that while mortality is falling, the number of people living with disability and chronic health conditions that affect everyday functioning is rising.
The study shows that globally, healthy life expectancy at birth increased from 61.1 years in 2010 to 63.1 years in 2023. But the gap between living longer and living healthier is widening. Globally, years lived with disability rose from 786 million to 990 million between 2010 and 2023. These numbers suggest that many people are spending more years living with the consequences of disease and injury. In many African countries, this is occurring alongside a growing burden of noncommunicable diseases such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
