Romania had the highest share of avoidable deaths in the European Union (EU) in 2015, a Eurostat statistic shows.

Almost half of the people under 75 who died in Romania in 2015 could have had their lives prolonged with the help of current medical knowledge and technology, the data shows.

In the EU, 1.7 million people under 75 died in 2015 and about a third of these deaths (33.1%) can be considered untimely. The concept of avoidable death means that certain deaths, for specific age groups and from specific diseases, could have been 'avoided' – that they would not have occurred at this stage if there had been timely and effective health care in place.

Romania had the highest share of amenable deaths in 2015, namely 48.6%, followed by Latvia (47.5%), Lithuania (47%), Slovakia (44.2%) and Bulgaria (some 42.5%). On the other hand, the share was below a quarter in France (23.6%) and between 25% and 30% in Belgium (26.0%), Denmark (26.6%), the Netherlands (28.1%) and Poland (29.9%).

Heart attacks were the main cause of amenable deaths, occurring in almost a third of the cases, followed by strokes, colorectal cancers and breast cancers.

editor@romania-insider.com