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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.
By Lavinia Mo HONG KONG (Reuters) - The new H7N9 bird flu virus can be transmitted between mammals not only via direct contact but also in airborne droplets, and may be capable of spreading from person to person, Chinese and American researchers have found. A study published in the journal Science and presented at a briefing in Hong Kong on Friday found that three ferrets - an animal often used for research on flu - that were in the same cage as ferrets infected with H7N9 had contracted the disease. ...