The Lancet is leading with a series of articles on health inequalities in Europe, and while the series as a whole is fascinating, there was one chart in particular which stood out for me, in the article “Health and health systems in the Commonwealth of Independent States”:
Take a closer look at Armenia’s life expectancy. That’s the effect of the Spitak earthquake, which killed at least 25,000 people, and left half a million homeless. It was so deadly that it marked the first time since World War II that the Soviet Government asked the USA for humanitarian aid – and it lowered life expectancy by a decade.
The chart also shows a lesser, but more prolonged, plummet in life expectancy in Tajikistan, around 1993. That’s the effects of the Tajik civil war, which lasted five years and killed up to 100,000 people.
For obvious reasons, the Lancet piece doesn’t examine those one-off events. And “avoid earthquakes and civil wars” isn’t the most useful advice to a nation trying to improve its life expectancy. But as a powerful display of data, there’s not much that can improve on that chart.
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