SPAIN'S inhabitants are the seventh-healthiest on the planet, according to a research project titled Global Burden of Disease (GBD).
Now published in the science magazine The Lancet, the report analyses how different countries have complied with, or otherwise, the United Nations' health objectives which cover a vast range of areas from reducing infant and maternal mortality and controlling AIDS and tuberculosis through to cutting road crash deaths and alcohol and drug addiction.
Each country studied was given a percentage, which in Spain's case was 82% - the same score as the UK, The Netherlands and Finland, some of the world's most developed countries.
Andorra pips them all at the post at 83%, whilst the joint three 'winners' are Iceland, Sweden and Singapore with 85%.
The last two places in the top 10 are occupied by Canada and Australia with 81%.
At the opposite end of the scale, the majority of the worst-scoring countries were in Africa , with the exception of Afghanistan – bottom of the list were the Central African Republic (CAR), Somalia and South Sudan on 22%, followed by Niger on 23%, Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on 24%, Burundi and Mali on 26%, the same as Afghanistan, and Sierra Leone on 27%.
Threats to health studied clearly differ according to the developed nature of each country – United Nations reports place 'diarrhoea' as one of the top 10 causes of death in the world at present and expect it to still feature in the list by the year 2030 – but some of the greatest global health risks were very 'western' in nature, according to the research.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com