2020 has undoubtedly been the most difficult year for everyone heath-wise. Dealing with a pandemic while trying to balance work and life has taken a toll on every individual’s health in one way or another.

In Lenstore’s latest research, the team analysed statistics on global health issues aside from COVID-19, such as vision loss, obesity rates, smoking, HIV cases, and mental health disorders, to highlight just how prevalent these health topics are.

Their research found that if the population of the world were 100 people, 6 would experience vision loss, 7 would have diabetes, 23 would be obese and another 23 would be smokers. This leaves just 41 people who are either healthy, or more likely living with other forms of health conditions such as cancer or heart disease.

Key takeaways

• The US has the highest percentage of obesity in adults at 36.2%
• Australia has the highest percentage of cancer rates per 100,000 People
• The US has the highest number of people with HIV/Aids at over 1 million
• At 10.8%, the US has the highest percentage of diabetics in its population

The US reports the highest percentage of stress and anxiety

2020 has proven to be an extremely tough year for many people’s mental health and well-being. Stress, anxiety, and overall sadness are all mental health concerns that need attention to help support those in need.

The research looked further into some worrying figures for countries around the world.

With 33% of adults who reported stress, anxiety or great sadness during COVID-19, the US ranks first, followed by the UK, then Canada.

Columbia has the highest percentage of vision loss

Colombia ranks as the number one country for loss of vision in adults with a total of 13.7%. This is broken down into 12.9% of men and 14.4% of women. When converting this into population figures, more than 6.8 million people have vision loss in Colombia.

In comparison to the global average of just 6%, it’s clear to see how prevalent vision loss is for the country.

Costa Rica follows Colombia in the rankings placing second with 13.3% of its population experiencing vision loss. With a make-up of 10% men and 11.4% women, Hungary completes the top three ranking with an overall average of 10.8% vision loss within adults.

Stand out countries such as the UK and US rank low in the list, with just 4.5% and 3.7% of adults having vision loss respectively.

Chile has the highest number of smokers

Despite the large efforts to cut smoking down across the world knowing the harm it causes to our health, it’s clear that smoking remains very apparent.

From our study, Chile ranks as the country with the highest smoking rates, equating to 38% of its population. Austria follows with 35.15% and then the Czech Republic with 33.2%.

Since the statistics show that over a third of the population for these countries are smoking, it raises the question of how we can support and raise awareness to help reduce this number, improving consumers health.

Data were data across more than 10 health metrics for 24 countries around the world, analysing the state of health around the world. Recording this data as a percentage where possible, they ranked each country to show which are experiencing the highest levels of health concerns.