Health Statistics Abound in U.N. Agency’s Survey

Japan’s women live longest, Hungarians have the highest suicide rate and more people living in industrialized nations die from smoking than from any form of violence, a new survey by the World Health Organization says.

The figures are among thousands packed into WHO’s 423-page statistical yearbook, which includes a comprehensive mortality survey based on reports from 55 countries, mostly in the Americas and Europe. The new edition, released this month, covers data through 1989.

Deaths linked to smoking total 1.8 million each year in the industrialized countries alone, the U.N. agency estimates.

The 800,000 smoking-related deaths among people ages 15-64 included in that figure exceeds “the combined total of all deaths due to any form of violence, be it accident, homicide or suicide.”

The U.S. death rate from cancer was 194.9 per 100,000 people, compared to 245.3 in Czechoslovakia and 107.8 in Israel.

The female breast cancer rate was 41.8 in Britain, 32.0 in the United States, 22.0 in Spain and only 8.5 in Japan.

In Japan, women’s life expectancy at birth is 82.5 years--six years more than for men. That compares to 78.6 years for women and 71.6 years for men in the United States.