'53% of EU citizens seek health information online'

By Aysu Bicer

ANKARA (AA) - One in two EU citizens (53%) aged 16-74 sought health information online in 2019, according to a Eurostat survey.

The information they accessed was related to injury, disease, nutrition, improving health or similar.

This was 2% higher than the previous year (53% compared with 51%) and up by 19% from 2009 (32%), EU's statistical office said.

The share, however, varied across the bloc's 27 member states.

The highest share was recorded in Finland, where 76% of users searched the Internet for health-related topics in the last three months prior to the survey, followed by the Netherlands (74%), the Greek Cypriot administration (69%), Denmark (67%) and Germany (66%).

In contrast, the lowest shares were observed in Bulgaria (30%), Romania (31%), Italy (35%), Poland (47%), Latvia and Slovenia (both 48%).

The Greek Cypriot administration saw the highest increase in accessing health information online, while Luxembourg posted the lowest.