Budget cuts coupled with the epidemic of obesity, smoking and binge-drinking will plunge the British health system into a “red zone”.
A time bomb “. This is what the National Health System (NHS) must expect. An explosion of difficulties, soon insurmountable if no investment is made in the public health sector.
The tone adopted by the experts of the British Medical Association (BMA) in their report addressed to Theresa May is serious. Health services have reached “a breaking point”, they explain. This situation is due to the conjunction of two elements: lifestyles whose hygiene is deteriorating, and budget cuts whose pace is accelerating.
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Because by 2021, the British government plans to reduce the NHS budget by 400 million pounds (470 million euros). However, the failure of the authorities to reduce the persistent inflation of obesity, smoking and binge drinking within the population risks, in this budgetary context, plunging the system “in the red” and condemning millions of people. patients to suffer from preventable diseases.
“In England successive governments have failed to develop long-term strategies to improve public health; scientifically proven measures have been thrown into oblivion ”, deplore the rapporteurs.
Doctors are therefore asking the government to take voluntary measures in the area of public health, which will require as much political courage as financial investment. This requires, they explain, a “much stricter regulation of the food industry and sugary drinks, taxes on alcohol and support for smokers to quit.”
£ 1 invested = £ 14 saved
The authors therefore recommend a 20% tax on sugary drinks (much more than the projects under study) or even the development of new objectives to reduce the consumption of fats, sugar and salt through, for example. example, the establishment of a nutritional code on foods – like the one France is in the process of adopting. They also propose an annual levy on tobacco companies.
We must therefore prevent, but also treat. In England, obesity was the cause of 525,000 hospitalizations in 2016. The obesity rate jumped from 15% in 1993 to 27% in 2015. Globally, 68% of men and 58% of women suffer from overweight or obese in the country.
Every pound invested in public health generates a future saving of 14 pounds sterling, insist the scientists, who point out the case of type 2 diabetes. In many cases, this pathology is “entirely preventable through public health approaches” . And yet, the costs associated with the disease were estimated at 8.8 million pounds in 2011. By 2035, they will have doubled, if the logic of short-termism continues, warn the authors.
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