Health in Switzerland

In 2015, Switzerland had the lowest mortality rate in Europe, at 331 per 100,000 population. It had the highest rate of death from drug use at 3 per 100,000. Life expectancy in 2013 was 80.5 years for men and 84.8 years for women. There are 220,000 regular consumers of cannabis. Mental health problems are common, affecting about a fifth of the population.

Goitre and associated deaf-muteism was widespread in Switzerland until the 1920s. In 1921 30% of 19-year-old Swiss conscripts had a goitre. In Bern, 94% of schoolchildren had some swelling of the neck and almost 70% had a goitre. About 10% of children were born with what was then known as cretinism. They grew little more than a metre tall, and had compressed features, thick skin, thin hair and distended bellies. They could not hear or speak and were profoundly brain-damaged. In 1883 a survey of goitre found rates were low in the Jura mountains and in the southern canton of Ticino, but very high in the rest of the country. In some villages one third of the people were deaf. Dr Heinrich Hunziker, a GP in Adliswil, discovered the cause in 1914 - a lack of iodine. In the last ice age, a permanent ice sheet formed over the Alps. It thawed and refroze in stages, and with every thaw, meltwater washed the iodine out of the soil. When iodised salt was introduced, first in the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden in 1922, goitre and associated problems disappeared. Since 1930, no babies have been born in Switzerland with congenital iodine deficiency syndrome.