DUSHANBE, November 2, 2015, Asia-Plus – According to Bloomberg list, which ranks countries using data from the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Health Organization, Tajikistan with an overall score of 36.27 percent is ranked 84th among 145th nations in terms of health.

It is to be noted that Tajikistan tops Central Asia’s nations in terms of health as Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan are ranked 85th, 101st, 104th and 111st respectively.

Singapore has been named the world’s healthiest country.  Singapore came top with an overall score of 89.45 per cent, Italy ranked second healthiest with 89.07 per cent, and Australia came third with 88.33 per cent.

The Bloomberg rankings gave each country with a population of 1 million or more a health score and a health-risk score.

Each country’s place was calculated by subtracting their risk score from their health score.

At the other end of the scale, the African country of Swaziland was named the least healthiest country in the world, scoring an overall grade of just 0.26 per cent.

African nations dominated the bottom of the list with Lesotho, Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad and Mozambique falling in the bottom 10.

The health score is based on factors such as life expectancy from birth and causes of death, while health-risk is based on factors which could impede health such as the proportion of young people who smoke, the number of people with raised cholesterol and the number of immunizations.

Total risk penalty is the average risk score of all factors plus an adjustment factor, which takes income into consideration.  Using World Bank guidelines, countries were divided into three income groups with specific health risks.  For countries with gross national income per capita of more than $12,276, smoking, obesity/overweight, cholesterol level and blood pressure were overweighted.  For countries with incomes of $1,006 to $12,275, high blood pressure, smoking, alcohol consumption and environmental factors were overweighted.  And countries whose residents earn less than $1,005 were overweighted in prevalence of HIV, environmental factors, childhood underweight and maternal health.  Adjustments were also made for countries that ranked worst in a risk factor that was outside of their income-group specific risks.  Countries with data for less than eight risk factors were excluded.