Life in Zimbabwe is shorter than anywhere else in the world, with neither men nor women expected to live to 40, World Health Organisation statistics showed on Friday. The WHO’s World Health Report for 2006 said the average life expectancy in the AIDS and poverty-stricken country was 36 years - less than half of the 82-year life span in Japan, which lies at the top of the table with San Marino and Monaco. The report used the latest data from 2004. Last year’s report, based on 2003, put Zimbabwe’s average life expectancy one year higher at 37. Women in Zimbabwe were the worst-off in the world, living an average 34 years, down from 36, the WHO data showed. Male life expectancy was 37 years, unchanged from 2003. Zimbabwe’s HIV infection rate has actually fallen in recent years to around a fifth of the population, apparently due to increased condom use and a reduction in sex partners, giving rare encouragement to a country battling its worst economic and political crisis since independence in 1980. But the population of some 12.5 million still has one of the world’s higher HIV prevalence rates, and more than half the infections and deaths strike women.
Tags: Zimbabwe, Mugabe, WHO, life-expectancy, HIV
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