London: European Union has a huge health problem of having too many ailing hearts, making it the number one health ailment in the Union, that costed the bloc’s members, a whopping 169 billion euros in 2003, according to a study.
Take a look at the annual statistics, but watch your heart before you read them. Cardiovascular disease ruled, making a dent of 230 euros on an average on Healthcare costs, per person. As a consequence, absenteeism from work amounted to 268.5 million lost working days, with 2 million people succumbing to it and 4.4 million debilitated, like living hell."CVD is the biggest single health problem facing Europe both in terms of resource burden and economic burden," said lead researcher Jose Leal from Oxford University. Germany and Britain, on account of their high population figures, nearly consume half of the EUs total costs for cardiovascular diseases. The UK ranked number one in spending on CVD, with 17.1 percent allocated from the healthcare budget to the problem. Germany, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Poland were equal with expenditure of 15%.
The research, published in European Heart Journal, seeks to focus the attention to the magnitude of the health problem facing the EU policy makers , that is expressed in money value to gauge the enormity.
