The future of public health

The scale of health inequalities in the UK is stark indeed: and their persistence has disfigured our society. Can there be any room for complacency when we know that a male resident of Manchester can expect to live over seven years less than his contemporary in Barnet? Or, that when it comes to healthy life expectancy the gap is even greater: The number of years of life in good health that a man can, on average, expect to live is almost 11 years better in Surrey than in Manchester. For women, the difference is nine years between these local authority areas. Death rates from coronary heart disease among first generation South Asians aged 20-69 are about 50% higher than the England and Wales average. Perinatal mortality among Pakistani born mothers is nearly twice the United Kingdom national average. None of this, of course, comes as any surprise to the people in this room. But such inequalities are simply unacceptable in Britain today and they should be rejected on every level, whether moral, social or economic.