Singapore is world's healthiest country: Bloomberg Rankings 2012

Channel NewsAsia, 16 Aug 2012

A Bloomberg survey has ranked Singapore as number one in its study of the world's healthiest countries.

The survey looked at factors such as average life expectancy, cigarette smoking rates and mortality, among others.

Singapore's health grade was 89.45 per cent, putting it at the top of 145 countries surveyed.

Singapore's total health score was 92.52 per cent, and its health risk penalty was at 3.07 per cent.

To get the health grade score, Bloomberg subtracted the risk score from the health score to determine the country's rank.

To identify the healthiest countries, Bloomberg Rankings said it created health scores and health risk scores for countries with populations of at least one million.

Five-year averages, when available, were used to mitigate some of the short-term year-over-year swings.

Italy was second with a health grade of 89.07 per cent, Australia ranked third with 88.33 per cent, Switzerland came in fourth with 88.29 per cent and Japan in fifth place with 86.83 per cent.

The other countries making the top ten are Israel (6th), Spain (7th), Netherlands (8th), Sweden (9th), Germany (10th).