Women live longer, but men enjoy better health

The report covers Guernsey and Alderney between 2019 and 2021. Over that period, 1,735 deaths were recorded, which was in line with the previous 20 years.

The life expectancy for children born over the three years looked at in the report is 83.4 years – 81.2 years for men and 85.5 for women.

But the healthy life expectancy swings the other way, with men having 64.5 years and women 63.2 years.

Overall, life expectancy is higher than the UK, where it is just less than 81.

‘For males, Guernsey has a higher healthy life expectancy than all four UK countries,’ the report states.

‘For females, Guernsey has a similar healthy life expectancy to England, but is higher than the other UK countries. Although Guernsey’s total life expectancies are very high relative to countries in the UK and English regions, the healthy life expectancies are more mid-range.’

But Guernsey is quite far behind Jersey, with women living there enjoying seven more healthy years than women in Guernsey, while men 26 miles away could expect to enjoy nearly two years more in good health.

Jenny Cataroche, head of public health intelligence, said the report would help to identify areas of inequality that needed more attention, or pick up trends in causes of death that are new.

‘One example of this is a notable difference in avoidable mortality between males and females, with males making up 62% of avoidable deaths during 2019-21,’ she said.

‘Knowing that this inequality exists means that further questions can be asked to explore the underlying reasons.

‘Are men seeking treatment promptly for health issues as they arise? Are there barriers that are preventing men accessing healthcare when the need it? Is enough being done to promote screening services to men and enable the types of behaviours and activities that prevent diseases occurring in the first place?’

The excess deaths figures are expressed as a percentage difference of actual deaths, compared to expected. This reached its highest point for the three years in April 2020, with actual deaths 43% greater than expected deaths.

‘The excess deaths arising from October to December 2021 were made worse by Covid-19 but this was not the only reason for, nor necessarily the primary cause of these excess deaths,’ the report states.

England and Wales experienced more extreme excess mortality than Guernsey over the winter of 2020/21.