Singapore tops list of healthiest countries: report

Singapore topped a Bloomberg list of the 20 healthiest countries out of 145 nations.

The city-state earned a health grade of 89.45 per cent, based on Bloomberg Rankings, which created health scores and health-risk scores for countries with populations of at least 1 million.

Factors looked at in the survey included average life expectancy, cigarette smoking rates and mortality, among others.

Singapore attained a total health score about 92.5 per cent, and a health risk penalty of almost four per cent.

The risk scores are subtracted from the health score to determine the country’s rank. If available, five-year averages were also used to mitigate some of the short-term-year-over-year swings.

Behind Singapore is Italy with a health grade of about 89 per cent, followed by Australia with about 88.33 per cent.

Switzerland with 88.29 per cent and Japan with almost 87 per cent round out the top five in the rankings.