Joint Academic Seminar Organized by Medical and Health Research Network and
Sau Po Centre on Ageing

Date: June 2, 2003 (Monday)
Time: 12:30 to 13:30
Venue: Seminar Room 5, LG 1, Laboratory Block, Faculty of Medicine Building, 21 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam

The rapid increase in life expectancy at birth in mid-1970s had been assumed to end in low mortality countries; however, it was still observed with sustained and continued increase over 1980s. The rapid increase in life expectancy, together with the significant drop in the mortality of the oldest-old, led many to question whether people escaped death from heart disease to live in poor health. Such a question fuelled an important debate on relationship between changes in mortality and morbidity, and on theories of the expansion of morbidity, dynamic equilibrium and the compression of morbidity.

The drop in mortality at older ages had continuously increased the proportion of ageing population. Initially, people in general perceived such a change should have led to an increase in disability rates, but data on disability collected since the end of 1960s in Western Europe and North America suggested that the functional status of the elderly had improved over last thirty years.

The concept of Disability Free Life Expectancy (DFLE) or Active Life Expectancy (ALE), a composite measure of morbidity and mortality, had been developed to monitor the quality of the years of life gained, particularly for the elderly. Various models, such as time series on DFLE and health expectancy time series, had also been adopted to study the association of health and mortality and to offer a unified framework for universal comparison and analysis.

It is conjectured in low mortality countries that a positive synergy of better education, nutrition, working condition and health behaviour should improve the functional abilities of future cohorts. It is also projected that all low mortality countries will face a longer life. Whether this longer life will be a longer healthy life largely depends on well-identified risk factors: tobacco and alcohol consumption, nutrition, exercise patterns and levels of education.

Dr Jean-Marie Robine is a senior research fellow at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, and Head of the Health and Demography team at the Department of Biostatistics, University of Montpellier 1, France. He is also Chair of the Committee on "Longevity and Health" of the International Union for the Scientific Study of the Population (IUSSP). He is now responsible for the development of an International Database on Longevity (IDL) in association with the main research demographic centres.

Press release - Chinese
Press release - English
Powerpoint presentation