Health transition: trends and prospects

For two centuries or so in Europe and more recently in the developing count ries, major progress have occurring in the human life expectancy especially thanks to the success of the fight against infectious diseases. This decis ive change used to be known as the epidemiological transition. However, lif e expectancy would not have continued to increase du the last three or four decades in industrialised countries, without important progress on new fie lds and especially in cardiovascular diseases, the reason why we progressiv ely moved toward the broader concept of health transition, including not on ly epidemiological changes but also the diversified type of response from t he society towards health problems. In the same time, the demographic conse quences of the increase in life expectancy have changed. In the first stage , till the sixties about, the major decline in mortality was observed among young children the consequence of which was to moderate the population agi ng due to the fertility decline. life expectancy reaches about 60 years the reverse phenomenon occurs: every further reduction of mortality affects ma inly the adult and old part of the population and reinforces the demographi c ageing process. What could happen in the next decades? Can life expectanc y continue increasing? Until what limit, if any! With what consequences for demographic ageing? No doubt that the XXIst century populations will be ve ry different from any we knew until now.