Life expectancy in the Middle East and North Africa has declined across the board since 2010, University of Washington professor Ali Mokdad writes. In Libya and Syria the life expectancy has dropped by 5-6 years and “in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, it declined by 0.25 years between 2010 and 2013.” Expectedly, civil war is to blame in Libya in Syria as the destruction of infrastructure is generally indiscriminate, Mokdad says, but the negative health trends are also apparent even in countries that have been experiencing economic growth. He warns that “the rapid deterioration of health-care systems in the Middle East and North Africa in the last half-decade is alarming. But the progress many countries in the region made in prior decades provides grounds for hope that it can be reversed.”