The average Muscovite lives six years longer than the national average — 76.7 years compared to 70.8 years — Moscow health department head Alexei Khripun said at a government meeting Tuesday, news agency Interfax reported.
The death rate in the capital in 2014 was lower in Moscow than in Russia as a whole, at 9.7 deaths per 1,000 in the capital, Khripun said, compared to the national average of 13 deaths per 1,000.
The number of women dying in childbirth in Moscow dropped 10.2 percent and infant mortality was down by 16.4 percent, according to City Hall's statistics. Deaths from circulatory diseases were less common in Moscow than in the country as a whole, with 529 fatal cases per 100,000 versus 698, Interfax reported.
Khripun also said Moscow's road accident mortality rate was five times lower than the national average, adding that ambulances usually get to the scene of a traffic accident within eight minutes, the Moskva news website reported.
Russia has seen natural population growth (calculated using the birth and death rates in the country, excluding immigration or emigration numbers) for the second year running, Labor Minister Maxim Topilin said in February, with births exceeding deaths in the country by 33,000 in 2014.
Moscow's population stood at just over 11 million in 2014, meaning that with an overall population of about 143 million, approximately one in 13 Russians can expect to benefit from the capital's average extra six years of life.
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