For the year 2019

DREM releases results of the National Health Survey

Between September 2019 and January 2020, the - designed with the collaboration of the National Health Institute Doutor Ricardo Jorge - was carried out in Portugal by Statistics Portugal. In the Autonomous Region of Madeira, the Regional Directorate of Statistics was responsible for the data collection obtaining 1,778 valid responses for this survey.

This statistical operation main goal was to characterize the resident Portuguese population health aged 15 or over in three main aspects: health status, healthcare and health determinants related to lifestyles.

The following results stand out:

• The most frequent chronic diseases reported by the population aged 15 years or over, were low back pain or other chronic back problems (31.8%), high blood pressure (28.7%) and allergies (23.0%). High blood pressure was the chronic disease that increased the most compared to 2014 (+6.0 percentage points – p.p.).This trend is identical to the country’s;
• Depression as a chronic disease maintained the 10.4% proportion of 2014 among the population aged 15 or over. The female gender remained as the most affected by this disease (14.2%);
• 9% of the resident female population aged between 50 and 69 years old, reported carrying out a mammogram in the 2 years prior to the interview, which shows a 4.5 p.p. increase over 2014;
• Despite the 1.6 p.p. reduction when compared to 2014, more than half of the population aged 18 or over (55.0%), was overweight or obese. That percentage can be divided in 38.2% which are overweight and 16.8% obese;
• The percentage of smokers among the population aged 15 or over dropped by 3.6 p.p. over 2014, not exceeding 17.1% in 2019;
• In 2019, the share of the population that consumed alcoholic beverages (63.0%) also showed a slight drop (-1.0 p.p.) when compared to 2014, even though the consumption frequency of this type of beverages among women increased by 1.6 p.p. between these years;
• The daily consumption of fruit is mentioned by majority of the population aged 15 years or over (60.5%), although in age groups under 35 years old the frequency of consumption of fruit is lower. Most people who daily consume fruit are women (55.7%);
• 9% of the population mentioned the daily consumption of vegetables and salads. The groups under 25 years old and over 65 years old are those who least mention this type of consumption. Most people who daily eat vegetables and salads are women (59.0%);
• The daily consumption of sugar-sweetened soft drinks is declared by 11.0% of the population aged 15 years and over. Men stand out in this type of consumption concentrating 58.8% of the people who daily consume sugar-sweetened soft drinks;
• Less than half of the resident population aged 15 years and over, that usually has at least one main meal, consumes soup (46.5%), fish (38.3%), beans or chickpeas (29.5%) or natural juices made from fresh fruit (21.8%);
• 8% of the resident population declared themselves as “reasonably satisfied”, “satisfied” or “quite satisfied” with life. This percentage is the same as in the previous edition of this survey;
• 9% of the resident population aged 15 years old and over reported having someone to turn to in case of a serious personal problem.

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