SYNOPSIS
Too often we focus on the world’s problems, and ignore the progress. Life expectancy in ancient Greece was only about 30 years, and it didn’t change much until the late 1800s. In 1870, life expectancy in Australia was only 34 years, and it is now 82 years; the improvement was mainly due to reduced deaths from infections in children associated with improved education and sanitation, and reduced crowding. Australians have a vastly better standard of living than our grandparents: on the average wage, it takes only half a second to light a room for an hour compared to 6 hours in 1800, and we have cheap food, clothing, books, cars, air transport, colour TV, internet and mobile phones – and far less violence. On the other hand, Australia has high child mortality compared to other rich countries: 20 other wealthy countries have lower under 5 mortality, and only 4 have a higher mortality. This is largely because of our inferior public education and public health services.
Average world life expectancy has increased from 30 years in 1800 to 70 years today. The number of under 5 deaths has halved from 12.6 million in 1990 to 6.3 million in 2013; maternal education played a large role in this improvement. However, there are still 5.5 million unnecessary under 5 deaths each year, or 15,000 per day. The number of babies per woman halved from 5 in 1950 to 2.5 in 2010, and the number of children in the world under 5 years of age will stay constant at about 2 billion from now on. Because of lower mortality, world population will continue to increase for 2-3 generations from 7.3 billion today and plateau at about 9.7 billion in 2055. Climate change poses a huge challenge, but we should celebrate the stunning improvement in the human condition in the last 150 years.
SPEAKER
Professor Frank Shann AM is a Staff Specialist in Intensive Care at the Royal Children’s Hospital, and an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne. He trained as an adult physician and paediatrician. Frank worked in Papua New Guinea for seven years, in Kenya, and with the International Committee of Red Cross in East Timor. He helped establish the World Health Organisation acute respiratory infections (ARI) programme, and his 1984 paper on respiratory infections was reprinted as a public health classic in the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation in 2003. He was Director of Intensive Care at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne for 20 years, and developed the paediatric index of mortality (PIM) model that is widely used to monitor the quality of paediatric intensive care. Frank was awarded the RACP Eric Susman Prize for medical research in 1986, the inaugural Howard Williams Medal for child health in 1989, he was made an inaugural member of the International Advisory Board of The Lancet in 1990, awarded the European Drager Award for research in 1998, and was made a member of the Order of Australia in 2010. He studies the non-specific effects of vaccines in children in high-mortality countries. He has published 230 articles, six books and 17 book chapters.