According to a new study, people throughout the world are living longer life, but they spend this longer life battling with several sicknesses. The study researchers, during their study, studied all major diseases and injuries in 188 countries.

According to an analysis published in The Lancet journal, the general health has shown major improvement across the world. This improvement is a result of significant progress against infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria in the past decade.

General health has improved, but healthy life expectancy of people has not increased to a desired level. This shows that people are living for more number of years but with illness and disability, states study.

Lead author Theo Vos, a professor at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, said, “The world has made great progress in health, but now the challenge is to invest in finding more effective ways of preventing or treating the major causes of illness and disability”.

The study’s main findings showed that the global life expectancy at birth for both sexes rose by 6.2 years from 65.3 in 1990 to 71.5 in 2013. Healthy life expectancy at birth rose by 5.4 years from 56.9 in 1990 to 62.3 in 2013.

The study also found stark differences between countries with the highest and lowest healthy life expectancies, and in the rates and direction of change.

For most of the 188 countries studied, changes in healthy life expectancy between 1990 and 2013 were significant and positive, the researchers said. In countries like Belize, Botswana and Syria healthy life expectancy in 2013 was not much higher than in 1990.