Curing the disease of poverty

The level of food poverty in Scotland is on a different scale to that experienced in parts of the developing world, but the fact that a significant number of families now rely on foodbanks remains a shocking indictment on our society.

Linda de Caestecker, director of public health in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, believes forcing people to depend on such services poses a risk to their mental, as well as physical, health. "It is dispiriting, it makes you lack hope and wonder if things will ever change," she says."If you can't feed your children, how do you feel as a parent?"

The "diseases of poverty": heart disease, diabetes, addictions, suicide, makes grim reading. So does her reminder that the 13.5-year gap in life expectancy between men living in Scotland's most poorest and most affluent areas has remained stubbornly persistent for 15 years, and that while women fare slightly better, the equivalent gap in female life expectancy has actually grown wider.

De Caestecker and her Lothian counterpart, Prof Alison McCallum, are calling for a raft of measures, including community supermarkets, improved childcare and support for lone parents to work, as well as a national healthy food policy. They also demand action on benefits and a living wage for everyone: a timely call, following the Office for National Statistics' report that 700,000 Britons now rely on a zero-hours contract for their main job.

As scientists they should understand that trying to remove symptoms and effects of a disease does not cure it. They should know they have to tackle the root cause for a solution – the capitalist system.