Basingstoke news and sport from the Basingstoke Gazette

Poverty key to ill-health

From the archive, first published Wednesday 29th Sep 1999.

IF YOU live in Southampton, you are less likely to suffer from skin or lung cancer but much more likely than your neighbours elsewhere in the South East to die from a stroke or a heart attack.

The city also has some of the worst dental health in the UK with the highest rate of decayed, missing and filled teeth for children aged under five years.

But the problems behind these statistics don't just belong to the health authority. The city council has a responsibility to promote healthy living and its city strategy document, The Renaissance of the City, aims to find solutions to some of the problems over the next 20 years.

Research is high on the agenda. The city needs to be able to anticipate changes impacting on health, like population, lifestyle and employment changes.

Health awareness is also a key factor - the more residents are aware of health problems the more they will look after themselves and have longer and healthier lives, the report concludes.

But there is a need for real action. Transferring resources from treatment to prevention and the promotion of healthy lifestyles is one suggestion, while still focussing on the needs of traditionally deprived and disadvantaged groups.

Poverty is often a key factor in ill-health - low birth weight in children and infant mortality are statistics that tend to be linked to wealth.

The council is committed to continue to prioritise this section of the community. And in just eight years' time they aim to achieve a state where there are no shared needles and no drug deaths in the city, suicide rates have been slashed by 50 per cent and three-quarters of all workplaces and schools meet Healthy Workplace standards.

Roger Bingham, press officer for the Southampton Community NHS Trust, said partnership with the city council was the way forward.

"The right approach is as much about encouraging good health as treating ill-health. Our partnership with the council at The Quays, where we have a health centre, is a good example of this.

"We want to encourage people to take some form of physical exercise and we will be working with the leisure and parks department and with education services in schools to promote the fact that exercise is a key to good health," he added.

The Daily Echo is looking at Southampton's vision for its next 20 years every day this week. Write with your views to the Letters Page, The Daily Echo, Newspaper House, Test Lane, Redbridge, Southampton, SO16 9JX.

Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.

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