How healthy are the British?

It is difficult to judge how healthy a nation is but there are various indicators such as how long people live whether there are still many common serious infectious diseases. In general, compared with fifty years ago, the health of people in Britain has improved considerably, partly as a result of better housing and education, and a higher standard of living.

However, not everybody enjoys a standard of health consistent with living in one of the world’s top industrial nations. Health and health care vary considerably from area to area and middle-class people tend to enjoy better health than working-class people. Unemployment, poverty, poor housing and bad diet are still major contributors to poor health. On the one hand, as people live in better conditions, eat better food and take more exercise, health standards tend to rise and people live longer. But there are other health problems such as smoking-related diseases, alcoholism and drug abuse, the spread of AIDs, and number of people who die from cancer.

One worrying feature about health in Britain is that more people die of heart disease and strokes (40 per cent of men and 38 per cent of women) than of any other group of diseases. Heart diseases kill about 30,000 men under the age of 65 every year.

Rates in Britain are among the highest in the world and have increased over the last ten years. Most victims have a history of high cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, or smoking, and attempts have been made to improve the British diet and to persuade people to stop smoking. Between 1972 and 1999 the percentage of male smokers fell from 52 to 28 per cent; for women the figure fell from 42 to 26 per cent. Efforts have been made to improve co-ordination between government departments to influence the nation’s diet and to advice on food production and consumption.

The debate over public and private

The number of people covered by private medical insurance rose from 1.6 million in the late 1960s to over 5.5 million, around 10 per cent of the population, by the late 1980s. Other people decide to ‘go private’ in order to pay for a particular operation (perhaps one for which they might have to wait for a long time under the NHS). Most private treatment involves a small range of surgical operations and the private sector does not provide emergency treatment or care for those who are ill for long periods. Most of the 10,000 private hospital beds are in private hospitals, although there are some private beds in NHS hospitals as well. Some NHS staff work in both the public and private sectors; nearly all the medical staff in both public and private hospitals were originally trained by the NHS.

The view of the Conservative government during the 1980s was that people should be given the freedom of choice to pay for their own medical care if they wish, and that the National Health Service must become more efficient and more cost-effective. Prescription charges rose and elements of privatization included the introduction of charges for eyesight checks and increases in dental treatment charges on the grounds that many people could afford them and should therefore pay. Opponents said that many people would not be able to pay and that health standards would decline as a result. Figures for private health insurance have changed little since the end of the 1980s.

Notes:

consumption – потребление

contributor – помощник

decline – уклон, падение, спад

managerial – административный