History The European Union has decided to include a small set of health expectancies among its European Community Health Indicators (ECHI) to provide synthetic measures of disability, chronic morbidity and perceived health. Therefore the Minimum European Health Module (MEHM), composed of 3 general questions covering these dimensions (Cox et al, 2009, p57), has been introduced into the Eurostat EU-Statistics on Income and Living Conditions Survey (EU-SILC)[2] to improve the comparability of health expectancies between countries. In addition life expectancy without long term activity limitation, based on the disability question, was selected in 2004 to be one of the structural indicators to be examined every year, during the European Spring Council for assessing the EU strategic goals (Lisbon Strategy) under the name of “Healthy Life Years” (HLY)[3]. Detailed information on the Health Expectancies in Europe are available from the European Health Expectancy Monitoring Unit (EHEMU) while last Healthy Life Years values can be found on the general public website (HLY) devoted to the Healthy Life Years.
