Avoidable Mortality in Moldova: An Untapped Resource for Increasing Life Expectancy

Abstract

Reducing mortality represents one of the main priorities on the government's agenda, and the achieved effectiveness in the public health policy is usually measured by the dynamics of life expectancy. The method of avoidable cause-of-death elimination has been used in this article, in order to emphasize the possible increase in life expectancy. The results suggest that the theoretical exclusion of preventable and treatable mortality would contribute to an increase in life expectancy by 14.2 years in males and 8.1 years in females, respectively. It thus follows that there is a great resource in decreasing young and working-age population mortality. A significant contribution to avoidable mortality is made by cerebrovascular and ischaemic heart diseases, neoplasms, as well as external and alcohol-related causes of death.