Thursday, June 09, 2011
The poor die younger in Glasgow
Age Concern UK expressed regret at the continuing variations. Director Michelle Mitchell said: "As the state pension rises to 66 by 2020, it is people living in poorer areas with lower life expectancies who will see their retirements cut short."
“In just four years the difference between the life expectancy of women in Notting Hill and those in Glasgow has increased by two whole years,” said TUC chief, Brenden Barber in response to the growing inequality. “Women living in the poorest areas will lose significantly more of their retirement years than those living in wealthy Britain.”
Dr Simon Szreter, professor of history and public policy at Cambridge University, said: "Life expectancy has a longstanding correlation with social class and income. The rich have got richer and the poor have stayed the same."
Monday, January 17, 2011
Why Bother?
A senior consultant surgeon has spoken out against screening patients for bowel cancer in Scotland’s most deprived areas...because they are likely to suffer from other serious conditions which could kill them anyway.
Angus Macdonald, consultant colorectal surgeon at Monklands Hospital in Airdrie, said that in his experience in Lanarkshire, an area of high deprivation with one of the country’s lowest life expectancies, many patients with small tumours were more likely to die from other conditions before the cancer claims their life.
Health officials estimate that the NHS’s bowel cancer screening programme, for people between the ages of 50 and 74, could prevent 150 deaths annually. But Macdonald argues for some sections of the population it would not actually change the age at which a patient will die. “When you roll out a screening programme there is a very real possibility that you will identify cancers in the people who would normally have died from something else. We might operate on them and as a result we might actually shorten their lives.”
Research carried out by Macdonald, which is due to be published in the Journal of Colorectal Disease , adds weight to the principle of addressing the underlying determinants of ill-health such as socio-economic deprivation rather than of early detection and treatment of cancer as a principle health improvement strategy in such populations.
He said: “For the elderly time is precious. We’ll have some people coming up to their 50 years of marriage who have put together plans for over five or six years to save up for that once-in-a-lifetime holiday. When you tell them they have cancer they say they’ll cancel the cruise. I say, don’t. Go away and enjoy yourself if you can. It doesn’t matter if you have your operation just now or in two months, it is not going to make any difference at the end of the day.”
Monday, January 10, 2011
Dying Old
He said: “It is not that I would discard such people. I would simply give them a more human and humane approach, which would use less intensive NHS facilities. The big debating point is: would people die earlier? And the answer I would give to that is we do not know. You might actually live longer if you do not have all the stress associated with going to the hospital for treatment and healthcare-associated infections. We all get to that stage in life where your systems begin to shut down, albeit slowly, and medicine cannot reverse that. If you treat the person as if you are going to reverse that, you actually do them harm and that is what we do at the moment.”
Hanlon, who trained as a doctor, said: “The system is designed to deal rapidly with you, shunt you through and get you off the waiting list. All of that is not human and humane.”
Some estimates, he said, suggest one in five hospital admissions is at least in part caused by previous treatment. He envisages a more open conversation between health professionals, patients and their families about whether fewer tests and treatments would be desirable in what is likely to be their last 12 months of life. Decisions would be made on a case-by-case basis, however, he stressed.
Lindsay Scott, communications manager for charity Age Scotland, said: “As an organisation, we would look at this proposal from a discrimination point of view. It was the idea in the first place with the NHS that from cradle to grave everyone is treated equally.” However, he said some older people would support Mr Hanlon’s ideas. A survey of 300 pensioners in Scotland found 65% supported assisted suicide for people with a terminal illness and 54% would consider it as a means of ending their own lives.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
A real drug problem
Ten years ago it was estimated that 6% of the Scottish population were regularly taking anti-depressants and this figure has been climbing for a decade. NHS Scotland said: “It is estimated that 10.4% of the Scottish population aged 15 and over make daily use of an anti-depressant drug.”
Billy Watson, chief executive at the Scottish Association for Mental Health, said: “The high numbers of people taking anti-depressants reflects the prevalence of mental health problems generally: one in four of us will experience a mental health problem at some point in our lives."
The Scottish Government’s goal, to stop the rise in anti-depressant prescribing by 2009-10 and prepare the ground for a 10% reduction in future years, has been abandoned. It has been replaced by a waiting time guarantee for psychological therapies of 18 weeks by 2014.
A survey carried out jointly by the Office of National Statistics and the Institute of Psychiatry found that children from poorer families are three times more likely to suffer from some kind of mental disorder.
The transport system is in chaos. The health service is crumbling. Schools have become testing factories. Pollution is rife and the environment under attack. The poor have got poorer. Begging and homelessness have spread. Crime is rising. Racism is reviving. Business culture reigns supreme, with “market forces”, “competition” and “profit” as the buzz-words. Life is becoming more and more commercialised and empty. People are becoming isolated from each other, so should we be surprised that mental illness is on the increase?
Some might say the standard of living may be going up, but the standard of life is most definitely going down.
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Statistics showed that males living in the most deprived 10 per cent of the country have a life expectancy that is 13.4 years shorter than those in the richest 10 per cent of the country. That means men in the most affluent areas can expect to live to the age of 81.1, compared with 67.7 for those in the most deprived areas.
The area with the lowest life expectancy is North Glasgow -where men can expect to live to just 69.8 years and women to 76.2 years.
Female life expectancy in the most deprived 10 per cent of the country is nine years lower than for the wealthiest 10 per cent of the country. Women in poorest parts of Scotland can expect to live to 75.4 years of age, but that figure rises to 84.4 years of age for those in the most affluent communities.
Scotland's life expectancy had worsened over the past five years and was now just ahead of eastern European nations such as Slovenia and Poland.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said "Nobody should be condemned to a life of ill health because of where they live or their family's background. Poor health is not inevitable and we should not accept it."
How true but how false. Under capitalism that is just what happens and we have seen that regardless of all the public health initiatives and reforms the situation remains and it will only be with the establishment of socialism that those words of the government spokeswoman will have any veracity.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
the poor decay
Andrew Lamb, Scottish director of the British Dental Association, said "...this study highlights the depressing fact that poor dental health and inequality are closely linked from very early in life... it's unacceptable that social deprivation is still such a strong marker of poor dental health."
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
It's a sad society
People in Glasgow are 50% more likely than those in Edinburgh to be prescribed antidepressants. The NHS handed out mood-enhancing medicines 1,145,381 times in Greater Glasgow and Clyde last year, compared to 521,944 in Lothian.
Dumfries and Galloway, Lanarkshire and Ayrshire and Arran were the next biggest users relative to population.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
sleepless nights
Three out of four workers are losing sleep worrying about job security, performance at work and finances, with civil servants, bankers and factory workers the worst affected.
Leigh McCarron, sleep director at Travelodge, said: “It is no surprise that those industries facing spending cuts and potential job losses came top. Job security and money worries are key drivers of stress.”
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
One Country - Two Nations
A child born in Calton, in the East End of Glasgow, is three times as likely to suffer heart disease, four times as likely to be hospitalised and ten times as likely to grow up in a workless household than a child in the city's more prosperous western suburbs.
A boy born in Bearsden, Milngavie, Lenzie, Clarkston or Kilmacolm can expect to live to over 80, according to data for 1998-2002. But a journey to the eastern side of Glasgow finds life expectancy plunging by two decades. Male life expectancy in Dalmarnock, Calton, Kinning Park and Townhead is below 60: Britain, as a country, passed this mark during the Second World War.
The NHS data can separate the counntry into two : "Prime Scotland", which comprises the best 100 neighbourhoods, and "Third Scotland", where life expectancy is closer to the third world.
If Prime Scotland were a country, it world have the longest life expectancy in the world. The top international spot is occupied by Iceland (79.0 years). Third Scotland, by contrast, has an average male life expectancy of only 64.4 years - meaning an eighth of the men in the country can expect to die before the official pension age. This life expectancy is lower than in Bosnia, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, Iran or North Korea.
ONE in four of Scotland’s pensioners is now living in abject poverty and the position is expected to get much worse
Elinor McKenzie, chairwoman of the Scottish Pensioners’ Forum said “Why should pensioners on less than £100 a week be asked to pay for the economic mess we are in? They see some people, the very rich, becoming even richer – how are we all in this together?” she asked.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Sugaring the pill ?
Hirst, a one-time Tory MP, is a former chair of Diabetes UK and now acts as the charity's vice-president. At the same time, he is chair of Edinburgh-based Pagoda PR, which represents Novo Nordisk.Hirst is “retained to act for a number of health-related clients, including Roche Diagnostics and Novo Nordisk”. Services include public affairs advice and parliamentary lobbying.
Tristan Stewart-Robertson, a writer and type-1 diabetic, said: “The withdrawal of this form of insulin highlights the problem of having only two companies worldwide that produce insulin. With only two firms controlling the patent, you really need a patients’ rights group that is 100% on the diabetics’ side."
When Novo Nordisk withdrew another insulin treatment, Actrapid in 2005 Hirst said: “...product rationalisation is a common fact of life.”
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
dying young in Glasgow
The ONS figures, from 2005 to 2007, show that the average man in Glasgow will live for 70.7 years and the average man in North Lanarkshire will live for 73.1 years, the two lowest averages in the UK.Men in the Kensington and Chelsea districts of London can expect to live to 87.7 years old, the highest UK average.
In 2008 death rates among over-55s were higher in Scotland than anywhere else in the UK.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Health is Wealth
It showed that men living in the poorest communities can expect to live 67.3 years - 13.5years less than those living in the richest areas, who can expect to reach the age of 80.8.
Similarly, with women, those living in the most well-off communities live longer than those in the most deprived, though in the case of females the gap is not so large.Females in the poorest communities can expect to live to the age of 75.1 while life expectancy for women in the most affluent areas is nine years higher at 84.1 years.
Men living in East Dunbartonshire have a life expectancy of 78, compared to 69.4 years in north Glasgow.For females, the difference in life expectancy between the two areas was six-and-a-half years, with life expectancy for women in East Dunbartonshire 82.5 years and 76 years in north Glasgow.
Sunday, March 08, 2009
recession is bad for your mental health
The BBC's Mark Sanders said the announcement was, in effect, an acknowledgement by the government that mental health problems could be caused by the recession.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
capitalism makes you sick
Lead researcher Dr Marianna Virtanen, from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, said: "The disadvantages of overtime work should be taken seriously."
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Poverty makes you thick
Normal nine and 10-year-olds from rich and poor backgrounds had differing electrical activity in a part of the brain linked to problem solving. The brains of children from low-income families process information differently to those of their wealthier counterparts.
Since the children were, in health terms, normal in every way, the researchers suspected that "stressful environments" created by low socioeconomic status might be to blame.
Dr Mark Kishiyama, one of the researchers, said: "The low socioeconomic kids were not detecting or processing the visual stimuli as well - they were not getting that extra boost from the prefrontal cortex."
Previous studies have suggested that children in low-income families are spoken to far less - on average hearing 30 million fewer words by the age of four.
Professor Robert Knight, added: "This is a wake-up call - it's not just that these kids are poor and more likely to have health problems, but they might actually not be getting full brain development from the stressful and relatively impoverished environment associated with low socioeconomic status."
Friday, November 07, 2008
work is bad for your health
He estimated that about 10% of all cancers were work related.While the issue is usually associated with older industries involving asbestos, Prof Watterson said carcinogens were present in diesel, pesticides, silica, wood dust and solvents. He added that Scotland gives a higher priority to road deaths and murders, which claimed about 1,250 lives in 2003/04, than it does to tackling work-related cancers.
Green Health - Red Revolution
Across the country, there are "health inequalities" related to income and social deprivation, which generally reflect differences in lifestyle, diet, and, to some extent, access to medical care.
This means that in general, people living in poorer areas are more likely to be unhealthy, and die earlier.
However, the researchers found that living near parks, woodland or other open spaces helped reduce these inequalities.
While the health specialists and enviromentalists place their faith in capitalism re-designing cities , the SPGB once more argues only socialism will create the conditions for the separation of town and countryside to wither away.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Who cares about the poor ?
Certainly it will not the same as the consequences the Credit Crunch will have on the working class .
The number of people seeking advice from the Citizens Advice Bureau about how to manage their debts has surged by a third in the past year according to this BBC report. 77,000 new callers in England and Wales with mortgage and loan arrears.
"These figures show how the current economic situation is hitting vulnerable and low-income households the hardest."
Mortgage lenders, on average, started repossession action when people were four months into their arrears. No government bail-out or rescue for the poor .
House repossession was rated as the event most likely to cause mental health problems according to a survey.
"Even for people lucky enough to hang on to their home, the stress and worry of arrears building up can be enough to harm your mental health - this survey shows it worries millions of us."
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Money worries 'may harm health'
The economic downturn could be bad news for our bodies, as well as our pockets
Britons are cutting back on expensive fruit and vegetables, and gym membership, claims a report by the Blood Pressure Association.
Professor Graham Macgregor, the Blood Pressure Association's chairman, said: "It is clear that Britons are under pressure and this could have serious consequences..."
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Calton and Lenzie wealth and health differences
"social injustice is killing people on a grand scale...The toxic combination of bad policies, economics, and politics is, in large measure responsible for the fact that a majority of people in the world do not enjoy the good health that is biologically possible."
Social factors - rather than genetics - are to blame for huge variations in ill health and life expectancy around the world, a report concludes.
For instance, a boy living in the deprived Glasgow suburb of Calton will live on average 28 years less than a boy born in nearby affluent Lenzie.
The average life expectancy in London's wealthy Hampstead was 11 years longer than in nearby St Pancras.
A girl in the African country of Lesotho is likely on average to live 42 years less than a girl in Japan.In Sweden, the risk of a woman dying during pregnancy and childbirth is one in 17,400, but in Afghanistan the odds are one in eight.
The report, drawn up by an eminent panel of experts forming the WHO's Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, found that in almost all countries poor socioeconomic circumstances equated to poor health.
"The key message of our report is that the circumstances in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age are the fundamental drivers of health, and health inequity."
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