The Maltese are healthier for longer than anyone else in Europe, an international survey has shown, confirming previous findings.

A Eurostat survey issued Thursday reports that among the EU countries, Malta recorded the highest number of healthy life years at birth in 2022 for women (70.3 years), ahead of Bulgaria (68.9 years) and Slovenia (68.5 years). 

In contrast, Denmark had the lowest number of healthy life years for women (54.6 years), followed by Latvia (55.4 years) and the Netherlands (56.3 years).

The highest number of healthy life years for men was also recorded in Malta (70.1), followed by Sweden (67.5) and Italy (67.1), while the lowest ones were found in Latvia (53.0 years), Slovakia (56.6 years) and Denmark (57.1 years).

The Eurostat findings for men and women.

In 2022, the number of healthy life years at birth in the EU was 62.6 years on average, 62.8 years for women and 62.4 years for men.

Life expectancy at birth for women in the EU was, on average, 5.4 years longer than that for men (83.3 years compared with 77.9 years).

Healthy life years - free from activity limitations - represented 75% and 80% of the total life expectancy for women and men, respectively.

Therefore, on average, men tended to spend a greater proportion of their somewhat shorter lives free from activity limitations, the survey says.

Most of the data on health status and health determinants come from two surveys: the EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC), which provides annual data on issues like long-standing illness or health problems  and the European health interview survey, which provides every five years a large variety of data on health status.

In 2017 the European Observatory’s Health Systems in Transition Report had also shown that Maltese people live on average 90 per cent of their life in good health, better than any other European country. The trend was maintained along the years, with a Eurostat report in 2022 saying that  Malta had the second longest healthy life expectancy in the European Union, surpassed only by Sweden.