Lifestyle helps Taipei residents live longest

Reporting the results of a study comparing life expectancies in 365 villages and townships around Taiwan 10 years before the program in 1995 and 10 years after it was launched, Wen Chi-pang said the life expectancy of Taipei City citizens had risen to 81.21 years, from 76.89 years in 1985. The life expectancy of all Taiwan residents had also been extended over that time, gaining an average of 2.39 years for men and 2.78 years for women, in part because of the national health insurance program, but Wen said stark regional differences remained.

The difference in life expectancy for Taipei City and Taitung County residents was still more than 10 years, even though the gap had been narrowed slightly to 10.03 years from 10.65 years a decade before the program was implemented.

“The study showed that the least healthy residents could not make use of the national health insurance program to narrow the gap in life expectancy between them and their healthier counterparts, “ Wen said.

“This has to do with such habits as smoking, drinking and betel nut chewing, which are harmful to one’s health,” he contended.

Medical resources can only contribute 10 percent to the life expectancy of the public, while poor habits affect 60 percent of one’s health, Wen said, with smoking and betel nut chewing typical examples.

In Taipei City, only 36 percent of men and 5.6 percent of women smoke, significantly lower than the 51 percent of Taitung County’s men and 15 percent of Taitung County’s women who smoke.

Betel nut chewing is also far more more popular in the southeastern county, with 33 percent of the county’s men and 20 percent of the county’s women chewing betel nut compared to only 6 percent of the men and 0.1 percent of the women in Taipei City doing the same.

“The national health insurance program has contributed more to women than to men in raising life expectancy, mainly because there are fewer women than men who smoke, drink or chew betel nut, “ Wen said.

“There are seven times more men than women who have such unhealthy habits,” he said.

Based on the study’s findings, Wen suggested that the insurance program focus not only on “treating disease, “ but also on spending more time and funding to help people “not get sick, “ saying such a strategy would truly promote national health and avoid the squandering of medical resources.

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