Health at a Glance: Europe 2020
State of Health in the EU Cycle
The 2020 edition of Health at a Glance: Europe focuses on the impact of the COVID‑19 crisis. Chapter 1 provides an initial assessment of the resilience of European health systems to the COVID-19 pandemic and their ability to contain and respond to the worst pandemic in the past century. Chapter 2 reviews the huge health and welfare burden of air pollution as another major public health issue in European countries, and highlights the need for sustained efforts to reduce air pollution to mitigate its impact on health and mortality. The five other chapters provide an overview of key indicators of health and health systems across the 27 EU member states, 5 EU candidate countries, 3 European Free Trade Association countries and the United Kingdom. Health at a Glance: Europe is the first step in the State of Health in the EU cycle.
Mortality from circulatory diseases
Circulatory (or cardiovascular) diseases remain the main cause of mortality in nearly all EU member states, accounting for some 1.7 million deaths and 37% of all deaths across EU countries in 2017. The morbidity and mortality related to circulatory diseases has major economic costs as well as human costs for Europe. The cost of circulatory diseases to the EU economy was estimated at EUR 210 billion in 2015, of which slightly more than half was due to direct health care costs, a quarter to productivity losses and a fifth to the informal care of people with cardiovascular diseases (Wilkins et al., 2017). This estimate does not take into account the welfare losses associated with premature mortality related to these diseases.