Demographic decline

Ukraine is considered to be in a demographic crisis due to its high death rate and a low birth rate. The current Ukrainian birth rate is 11 births/1,000 population, and the death rate is 16.3 deaths/1,000 population. A factor contributing to the relatively high death is a high mortality rate

Mortality rate

Mortality rate is a measure of the number of deaths in a population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit time...

 among working-age males from preventable causes such as alcohol poisoning and smoking

Smoking

Smoking is a practice in which a substance, most commonly tobacco or cannabis, is burned and the smoke is tasted or inhaled. This is primarily practised as a route of administration for recreational drug use, as combustion releases the active substances in drugs such as nicotine and makes them...

. In 2008, the country's population was one of the fastest declining in the world at -5% growth. The UN warned that Ukraine's population could fall by as much as 10 million by 2050 if trends did not improve.

High blood pressure and obesity

According to a study, entitled "Main reasons for the high death rate in Ukraine" conducted by the World Bank

World Bank

The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...

 and released in December 2010 every third Ukrainian aged 18-65, including every fifth aged 18-25, had a high blood pressure. Almost 29% of the respondents suffered overweight, and 20% suffered from obesity.

Smoking

According to the above mentioned 2010 World Bank study 36% (28.6% is the average in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

) of Ukrainians smoke tobacco, including 31% of those who smoke every day. Men with primary education and women with higher education are inclined to smoking. Some 80% of daily smokers are men. The average age that daily smokers start the habit is decreasing, and at present is 16 years. In the younger age group there are four times as many smokers as in the older age group. The smallest percentage of smokers is to be found in the west of the country (24.6%), while the largest is in the east (34%).

HIV/AIDS

Ukraine has one of the fastest growing HIV

HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

/AIDS

AIDS

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

 epidemics in the world. About 1.63 percent of Ukrainian

Ukrainians

Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...

 adults, or about 756,300 citizens, were estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS in 2007, up from 1.46 percent of the population in 2005, or 685,600 citizens, according to UNAIDS. The statistics only reflect official cases, while those infected is likely higher according to UNAIDS. The number of HIV/AIDS cases in Ukraine reduced by 200 or 3.9% to 4,900 in the period of January-November 2008, compared with the corresponding period of last year. Ukraine has one of the highest rates of increase of HIV/AIDS cases in Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

.

Reforms

As of March 2009 the Ukrainian government to reforming the health care system, by a.o. the creation of a national network of family doctors and improvements in the medical emergency services

Emergency medical services

Emergency medical services are a type of emergency service dedicated to providing out-of-hospital acute medical care and/or transport to definitive care, to patients with illnesses and injuries which the patient, or the medical practitioner, believes constitutes a medical emergency...

. Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko

Yulia Tymoshenko

Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko , née Grigyan , born 27 November 1960, is a Ukrainian politician. She was the Prime Minister of Ukraine from 24 January to 8 September 2005, and again from 18 December 2007 to 4 March 2010. She placed third in Forbes Magazine's List of The World's 100 Most Powerful...

wanted (in November 2009) to start introducing a public healthcare system based on health insurance in the spring of 2010.

External links

• World Health Organization (WHO): Ukraine