Ballymoney folk live longer

According to last year’s British Heart Foundation findings, Ballymoney was placed ahead of Glasgow and London in terms of heart disease.

However, the mortality rates for 2012 as recorded by the Office of National Statistics show that Ballymoney has the lowest death rate - with 424 deaths in every 100,000 members of the population.

The average Northern Ireland rate was 567 deaths in every 100,000 members of the population.

For England the rate of death in 2012 stood at 523.9 per 100,000 populations compared with 567.8 deaths in Wales and 640.1 in Scotland.

Life expectancy at birth in the UK currently stands at 79.1 years for men and 82.9 years for women.

Also this week, statistics on suicide in Northern Ireland showed that Moyle District Council area had the lowest number of suicides in the province in the 15 years since the Good Friday Agreement was signed.

A new report found that almost as many people died by suicide in the years following the Good Friday Agreement as died in the years of the Troubles.

A report on the news website The Detail studied suicide data from the Northern Ireland Statistics Research Agency.

The statistics showed that while around 3,600 people were killed during the Troubles from 1969 to 1997, a total of 3,288 people died as a result of suicide in the years following the Good Friday Agreement 1998 -2012.

The largest number of suicides occurred in Belfast with 718 people dying. The lowest was in Moyle with 31 people dying as a result of taking their own lives. Data showed that 36 people in the Ballymoney Council area committed suicide in the years 1998 - 2012.