Average life expectancy in Russia has reached 73 years, a top health official said on Thursday.
Russia plans to spend 1.7 trillion rubles ($26.68 billion) on dramatically improving health care to accomplish President Vladimir Putin’s goal of raising life expectancy to 78 years by the time his term ends in 2024.
Average life expectancy rose to more than 73 years in 2018, Olga Tkacheva, the Health Ministry’s chief of geriatrics, told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.
Official demographic figures for 2018 are expected later in 2019.
The latest available data says average life expectancy rose to 72.7 years in 2017, or 67.51 for men and 77.64 for women.
“This issue has to be addressed in all age groups – infant, middle-age and elderly mortality has to be reduced,” Tkacheva was quoted as saying.
Russia was ranked the world’s 95th healthiest out of 169 countries in Bloomberg’s 2019 index last month.
