PHA-Exchange> UK Health Watch Report

[Claudio]

> From: Alex Scott-Samuel
>
> UK HEALTH  WORSE UNDER NEW LABOUR, SAYS NEW REPORT ON EVE OF EU
> PRESIDENCY HEALTH INEQUALITIES SUMMIT
>
> UK Health Watch Report: The Experience of Health in an unequal society
>
> October 2005
>
> Available online as PDF file [164p.] at:
> http://www.pohg.org.uk/support/downloads/ukhealthwatch-2005.pdf
>
> On the day that the UK government, as part of its EU Presidency, hosts a
> two day Health Inequalities Summit conference in London, a new report
> claims that health inequalities have deteriorated as a direct result of
> government policies.
>
> 'Doing better but feeling worse' is how UK Health Watch 2005 - an
> 'alternative UK health report' from the Politics of Health Group -
> describes health in the UK in 2005. 'Although average life expectancy in
> the UK continues to increase, the inequalities between rich and poor
> people, and the problems faced by socially excluded groups,  have got
> steadily worse under New Labour. This is confirmed by the Government's
> own statistics', says Dr Alex Scott-Samuel, joint editor of the report
> and Joint Chair of the Politics of Health Group.
>
> The report - which is published online and is free to download -
> presents a wide range of articles on what it calls 'the experience of
> health in an unequal society'. Some articles are by established experts,
> like Professors Richard Wilkinson, Peter Townsend, Priscilla Alderson,
> John Appleby and Dennis Raphael, others by activists like the 'McLibel
> Two' who came out on top in the recent libel case brought by McDonalds.
>
> An overall theme of the report is the need for the Government to
> 'refocus upstream' - to go beyond the common focus on diseases and
> lifestyles, and to address the social and political influences that are
> responsible for ill-health and inequality. Most of the report's articles
> identify economic factors like poverty and income inequality, together
> with social influences like unequal opportunities and discrimination, as
> the upstream factors requiring urgent preventive action.
>
> UK Health Watch 2005 doesn't hesitate to offer prescriptions for the
> many ills it identifies. These range through diverse proposals such as
> increasing employee ownership of private companies; respecting the human
> rights of  young people; placing sex education in the core national
> curriculum; and giving more emphasis to expressing emotions and less to
> displaying aggression in the way we bring up our children.
>
> UK Health Watch 2005 is the UK's contribution to Global Health Watch -
> an alternative world health report launched by the People's Health
> Movement in July 2005.
>
> Notes
> 1  'UK Health Watch 2005 - the experience of health in an unequal
> society' by the Politics of Health Group, can be downloaded at
> www.pohg.org.uk <http://www.pohg.org.uk/>
>
> 2 The Politics of Health Group (www.pohg.org.uk) campaigns for the
> social, economic and environmental conditions in which the health of all
> people can thrive, and against the market-oriented political and
> economic decisions that are currently being taken nationally and across
> the world, and the inequalities, discrimination and poor health they
> create
>
> 3 The Global Health Watch report (www.ghwatch.org) was launched in July
2005 by the People's Health Movement at the 2nd People's Health Assembly in
Cuenca, Ecuador
>
> 4 Information on the EU Summit can be found at
> www.regteam.com/healthinequalitiessummit
> <http://www.regteam.com/healthinequalitiessummit>