The Swedes were closely followed by two other Nordic countries - Finland and Norway.

Britain ranked 14 in the survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), published in Healthcare Europe. Russia was bottom.

The 35 European countries were given an overall health score, based on 14 health indicators, including life expectancy, death rates, childhood mortality and smoking.

Official statistics, such as World Bank figures, were used for the report.

The Nordic countries were high-scoring because of good community medicine and strong public health programmes.

EIU researcher Ben Jones said their health programmes were easier to manage because they had relatively small populations.

The Nordic trio were closely followed by Italy and Greece, which have low levels of heart disease because of their Mediterranean diets.

Italy is also praised for its childhood immunisation programme.

The other countries in the top 10 were Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, France and the Netherlands.

Cancer and Aids

Britain scored poorly because of its high cancer and respiratory death rate and because it has more Aids cases than many other European countries.

The survey suggested that Britain's health was improving, with the number of people dying from tobacco-related illnesses falling in recent years.

This is likely to mean a fall in the death rate from chronic diseases in the next 10 to 15 years.

Germany trailed two places after Britain, mainly because of poor immunisation and a high death rates for mothers in eastern Germany.

Eastern European countries, such as Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia and Russia were bottom of the chart.

"In general, east Europeans have the worst health because their diets are bad and their healthcare infrastructures are dominated by expensive and inefficient hospitals," said the magazine.