North MSP demands action over health inequalities
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Highlands and Islands MSP David Stewart has said it is “a disgrace” that those who live in the most deprived communities are more than twice as likely to die with Covid-19 than those in wealthy areas.
At the virtual meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s health and sport committee today, Mr Stewart, who is Scottish Labour’s shadow public health minister, asked health secretary Jeane Freeman what the Scottish Government intended to do to reverse health inequalities.
“The Royal College of GPs concluded in evidence to our committee that the pandemic has ‘shone a light on the persistent health inequalities that continue to exist in Scotland’,” Mr Stewart said.
“All our witnesses will know this, but those who live in our most deprived areas are more than twice as likely to die with Covid-19 than those in the least deprived communities.
“I feel this is a disgrace. What action is the Scottish Government going to carry out to reverse health inequalities?”
Mr Stewart also raised the connection with obesity and conditions such as diabetes, and called for cross-cutting policies in the future – for example policies that cross the different aspects of housing, health and employment.
He said: “There may well be future pandemics, or of course regional health emergencies such as the foot-and-mouth crisis in 2001, but we can read the crystal ball that the poor will get a raw deal on these.
“How can we turn health inequalities on their head and place the disadvantaged on the top of the list?”
Ms Freeman said Mr Stewart was right about the light being shone on those more severely impacted by Covid-19.
She detailed how there was also emerging evidence about the longer-term impacts of those who have had the disease in terms respiratory, cardiovascular and renal functions and clear indications that certain underlying health conditions may make an individual more susceptible to a serious response to the infection, or the infection causing serious ill health in an individual compared with those who do not have underlying health conditions, and some of those underlying health conditions related back to the circumstance of poverty and deprivation.
She added that Scotland's chief medical officer and senior officials had been asked to look at what was needed on population health, particularly in relation to health inequalities.
“There is a clear, pressing demand now for us to find ways to be more effective in reducing health inequalities and reaching groups of people with important but practical ways by which they can improve their own health that we have not so far been successful in doing in 20 years of devolution,” Ms Freeman said. “There is much more for us to do and we have already tasked the initiation of that work.”
After the meeting Mr Stewart said he welcomed Ms Freeman’s assurance that work was under way to look again at health inequalities and her comment that it was “entirely fair to demand of this government or any government that, as you plan for your response to any health emergency, your early thoughts go to those who are most disadvantaged in your society”.
Mr Stewart added: “However, in January, even before coronavirus lockdown, the scale of persistent health inequalities was highlighted by Scottish Government statistics.
“In 1997, premature mortality rates were three times higher in the most deprived areas compared with the least deprived. In 2018, rates were four times higher in the most deprived areas.
“Over the last decade there has been a desperate need to plough more investment into these communities, to find better ways to tackle health inequalities. Covid-19 has brought into sharp focus that this has not happened and it’s shameful.”
