According to a report from the OECD that was released on Thursday, Portugal in 2015, was the EU member state with the most pneumonia deaths relative to population. In the EU as a whole, the disease killed around 140,000 people that year.

"Portugal, Slovakia and the United Kingdom have the highest rates of mortality from pneumonia, while Finland, Greece and Austria have the lowest rates", the OECD’s annual report Health at a Glance states.

The report states that advanced age, tobacco, alcohol abuse and some chronic respiratory conditions are the main risk factors for pneumonia, which in Europe overall accounts for 30% of all deaths from respiratory diseases.

The 2017 report of the National Programme for Respiratory Diseases of Portugal’s Directorate-General for Health acknowledged the high pneumonia mortality rate in the country, but also stressed that mortality and hospitalisations for those under 65 have been decreasing in the country.

"Below 65, it is worth noting the evidence of a reduction in the standardised mortality rate for pneumonia, with a reduction of 23.5%” between 2009 and 2015, the document states.

Also, it noted, hospitalisations for bacterial pneumonia fell consistently between 2011 and 2016, by 4% overall.

The new report from the OECD shows that mortality from respiratory diseases is the third leading cause of death in Europe. In 2015, more than 440,000 people died of such diseases, representing a 15% increase over the previous year.

The biggest killer among them is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, with 180,000 deaths in the European Union in the year in question.

In Portugal, the mortality rate due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in 2015 was 27.6 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, putting it in the middle of the ranking of the EU’s 28 member states and below the average rate of 36.3 deaths per 100,000.

In the case of cancer, the OECD report notes that more than 3 million new cases of cancer are estimated in the 28 EU countries this year alone, the most frequent being breast cancer (400,000 new cases), followed by prostate cancer (375,000).

In terms of the incidence rate, the European average is estimated at 569 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Portugal’s rate is below that, at 492 cases per 100,000, making it one of the four countries with a lower incidence of all new cases of oncologic disease.