Miami, .- The mortality caused by the “epidemic” of drug overdose in the United States is 3.5 times higher compared to other 17 countries with “high income”, concluded a report from the University of Southern California (USC) ) disclosed this Thursday.
The study showed that overdose deaths reduce life expectancy by 12% for men and 8% for women in the country.
“The United States is suffering an epidemic of drug overdoses of unprecedented magnitude, not only when analyzing it for its own history but also when compared with the experience of other high-income countries,” said Jessica Ho, author of the study.
The research, published on Thursday in the journal Population and Development Review, states that it is the first to show that the epidemic of drug overdose “is contributing to increase the difference between life expectancy in the United States and other 17 countries with high income. “
At the beginning of the 21st century, Finland and Sweden had the highest levels of mortality due to drug overdoses, while at present mortality rates due to this cause in the USA. duplicate those of these two countries.
“Drug overdose mortality in the United States is now more than 27 times higher than in Italy and Japan, countries with the lowest death rates from overdoses,” the study said.
The experts analyzed figures from the Human Mortality Database created by the University of California Berkeley, and from the Mortality Database of the World Health Organization (WHO), among other sources.
“On average, Americans live 2.6 years less than people in other high-income countries,” said Ho, a professor at the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at USC.
He pointed out that this places the United States “more than a decade behind the life expectancy reached by these high-income countries.”
More than 70,000 people died of drug overdoses in the United States in 2017, the study said.
The National Security Council, a nonprofit organization, detailed last January that Americans are more likely to die today from an accidental overdose of opioids than in a car accident. (EFEUSA)
