NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. life expectancy jumped last year, and preliminary data suggests there may be another — much smaller — improvement this year.
Death rates fell last year for almost all leading causes, notably COVID-19, heart disease and drug overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Thursday. That translated to adding nearly a year the estimated lifespan of Americans.
Experts note it's part of a bounce-back from the COVID-19 pandemic. But life expectancy has not yet climbed back to prepandemic levels, and the rebound appears to be losing steam.
“What you're seeing is continued improvement, but slowing improvement," said Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a University Minnesota researcher who studies death trends. “We are sort of converging back to some kind of normal that is worse than it was before the pandemic."
Last year, nearly 3.1 million U.S. residents died, about 189,000 fewer than the year before. Death rates declined across all racial and ethnic groups, and in both men and women.
Provisional data for the first 10 months of 2024 suggests the country is on track to see even fewer deaths this year, perhaps about 13,000 fewer. But that difference is likely to narrow as more death certificates come in, said the CDC's Robert Anderson.
That means that life expectancy for 2024 likely will rise — ”but probably not by a lot,” said Anderson, who oversees death tracking at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.
Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year might expect to live, given death rates at that time. It's a fundamental measure of a population's health.
For decades, U.S. life expectancy rose at least a little bit almost every year, thanks to medical advances and public health measures. It peaked in 2014, at nearly 79 years, and then was relatively flat for several years. Then it plunged during the COVID-19 pandemic, dropping to just under 76 1/2 years in 2021.
It rebounded to 77 1/2 years in 2022 and, according to the new report, to nearly 78 1/2 last year.
Life expectancy for U.S. women continues to be well above that of men — a little over 81 for women, compared with a little under 76 for men.
In the last five years, more than 1.2 million U.S. deaths have been attributed to COVID-19. But most of them occurred in 2020 and 2021, before vaccination- and infection-induced immunity became widespread.
The coronavirus was once the nation's third leading cause of death. Last year it was the underlying cause in nearly 50,000 deaths, making it the nation's No. 10 killer.
Data for 2024 is still coming in, but about 30,000 coronavirus deaths have been reported so far. At that rate, suicide may surpass COVID-19 this year, Anderson said.
Heart disease remains the nation’s leading cause of death. Some underappreciated good news is the heart disease death rate dropped by about 3% in 2023. That’s a much smaller drop than the 73% decline in the COVID-19 death rate, but heart disease affects more people so even small changes can be more impactful, Anderson said.
There's also good news about overdose deaths, which fell to 105,000 in 2023 among U.S. residents, according to a second report released by CDC on Thursday.
The causes of the overdose decline are still being studied but there is reason to be hopeful such deaths will drop more in the future, experts say. Some pointed to survey results this week that showed teens drug use isn't rising.
“The earlier you start taking a drug, the greater the risk that you could continue using it and the greater the risk that you will become addicted to it — and have untoward consequences,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which funded the survey study. “If you can reduce the pipeline (of new drug users) ... you can prevent overdoses.”
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
FILE - Iron crosses marking graves are silhouetted against storm clouds building over a cemetery Saturday, May 25, 2024, in Victoria, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)
BERLIN (AP) — Thousands of Syrian doctors work in Germany, and the fall of Bashar Assad is raising concern over the potential consequences for the health sector if many of them were to return home.
Germany became a leading destination for Syrian refugees over the past decade, and some politicians were quick to start talking about encouraging the return of at least some after rebels took Damascus earlier this month. Others noted that the exiles include many well-qualified people and said their departure would hurt Germany — particularly that of doctors and other medical staff.
“Whole areas in the health sector would fall away if all the Syrians who work here now were to leave our country,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said last week. “For us it is important that we make the offer to the Syrians who are here, who have a job, who have integrated, who are crime-free, whose children go to school, to stay here and be there for our economy.”
Syrians have become a factor in a health sector that struggles to fill jobs, part of a wider problem Germany has with an aging population and a shortage of skilled labor.
The head of the German Hospital Federation, Gerald Gass, says Syrians now make up the largest single group of foreign doctors, accounting for 2% to 3%.
An estimated 5,000 Syrian doctors work in hospitals alone. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, who puts the total number of Syrian doctors at over 6,000, says they are “indispensable” to health care.
Gass said the picture hospital operators are getting from Syrian doctors so far is “very varied.” Some — particularly those with many relatives still in Syria — are considering a quick return if the situation proves stable, while others feel at ease and well-integrated in Germany and want to stay. But “no looming mass movement toward Syria is recognizable” at present.
“It's certainly not the case that patient care would collapse in Germany if all Syrian doctors returned now,” Gass said. “But of course we have the situation that these people often work in smaller groups at individual sites" — whose quick departure could force temporary local closures.
“We are well advised to treat these people respectfully,” Gass said. “And yes, hospital owners are giving thought to how they could fill these jobs.”
Dr. Hiba Alnayef, an assistant pediatric doctor at a hospital in Nauen, just outside Berlin, said she has been asked in the last 10 days, “what if the Syrians all go back now?”
“I don't know — some want to, but it's very difficult and uncertain,” said Aleppo-born Alnayef, who has spent much of her life outside Syria and came to Germany from Spain in 2016. She said it's something she thinks about, "but I have a homeland here too now."
She said she and other Syrian doctors and pharmacists would like to build cooperation between Germany and Syria.
“The Germans need specialists, Syria needs support ... renovation, everything is destroyed now,” she said. “I think we can work well together to help both societies.”
Alnayef said the German health system would have “a big problem” if only part of its Syrian doctors decided to leave — “we are understaffed, we are burned out, we are doing the work of several doctors.” She said Germany has offered “a safe harbor,” but that discrimination and racism have been issues and integration is a challenge.
Dr. Ayham Darouich, 40, who came from Aleppo to Germany to study medicine in 2007 and has had his own general practice in Berlin since 2021, said that “as far as I have heard, none of my circle of friends wants to go back.”
“They have their family or their practices here, they have their society here, they are living in their homeland,” Darouich said. German concerns that many might return are “a bit exaggerated, or unjustified.”
But he said Germany needs to do more to persuade medical professionals it trains to stay in the country, and that it could also do more to make itself attractive to foreigners needed to fill the gaps.
“We see that the nurses and medical professionals in hospitals earn relatively little in comparison with the U.S. or Switzerland,” Darouich said, and poorly regulated working hours and understaffed hospitals are among factors that “drive people away."
Associated Press journalist Pietro De Cristofaro in Berlin contributed to this report.
Follow the AP’s Syria coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/syria
Syrian doctor Ayham Darouich, 40, attends an interview with the Associated Press in his doctor's office in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Syrian doctor Ayham Darouich, 40, attends an interview with the Associated Press in his doctor's office in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Syrian doctor Ayham Darouich, 40, works in his doctor's office in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Syrian doctor Ayham Darouich, 40, examines a patient in his doctor's office in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
