Poverty and marginalization increases pressure on the health sector in Britain

The National Health Services in Britain faces a crisis that exceeds the limits of traditional medical care, as there are influential stories about young women, families and individuals who live on the margins of society, and these stories highlight the direct link between chronic poverty and the deterioration of public health.

In the “Forenes” General Hospital in the northwestern Cambria province, a group of 11 young women between the ages of 19 and 35 became familiar to the emergency department employees, where they are constantly visiting a request for care.

All of these young women were passed by turbulent experiences, some of whom are in care homes, while others suffer from severe psychological disorders and the absence of social support, and most of them are poor and need psychological support, which led them to use dangerous methods to stay inside the hospital, such as taking non -fatal doses of medicines or swallowing home things only in order to obtain a bed that provides them with temporary safety.

Despite the lack of members of this group, it constituted 9% of more than 45.2 thousand visits to the hospital’s emergency department within one year, at a cost exceeding 250 thousand pounds.

Leaders in the British health sector describe this behavior as part of a “frightening style” of self -harm that is increasing among some marginalized groups, whose permanent resort is the local hospital.

It is not confined to the youth category. Some of the elderly women in the medical wings deliberately neglect their health in the hope of receiving comprehensive care within the hospital, especially in the winter when heating bills rise significantly.

Neglected diseases

In light of the decline in the health care system in Britain, the Guardian newspaper conducted a month -long investigation, during which it met with doctors, nurses and social workers in the most deprived areas of the country, such as Blackpool, Burnley and Paro.

The investigation revealed neglected diseases that doctors describe as “similar to medieval diseases”, where the lack of family doctors and community nurses leads to the population’s dependence on emergency as a last resort.

Emergency visits have multiplied in some areas since 2010, and the calls of ambulances increased by 61%, and this coincided with the government’s demands to reduce the budgets of some health bodies for half, which led to the abolition of up to 13.5 thousand jobs linked to the health care sector, and caused concern about the feasibility of plans to transform into community care and prevention that is supposed to be announced by Waseed Minister of Health soon.

Challenges

But the challenges are great, as Britain has the lowest average life expected in Western Europe, and it has recorded the highest rates between rich countries for deaths that can be avoided with prevention and treatment.

British families live in extreme poverty, to the extent that they have to feed their children with rehearsal milk, or closing refrigerators at night to provide electricity, which may cause a serious bacterial infection, and exposes them to the risk of food poisoning. Dependence on cheap processed foods has also become a common pattern amid high obesity and malnutrition rates.

One of the health services leaders said: “There is a feeling of despair among the professionals, and we are doing what we can, but I am not very sure of what can be done, it is a rooted problem, but it is a sign of something broader and deeper that happens in society.”

Initiatives

Health services have become focused on treatment rather than prevention, but in some areas such as Lancashire and South Cambria, pioneering preventive initiatives have launched, and health leaders followed a new approach aimed at treating cases before they turned into crises. The community nurse, Lizi Holmes, spent two years to persuade the poor residents of the Raylands neighborhood in Lancashire to conduct free medical examinations.

This society was historically one of the most severe Lancashire societies without doctors, and the population is almost uninterrupted by the National Health Services Authority until they are authorized to go to the hospital or go to the emergency department.

Holmes, who won the prestigious Queen Award for the nurses, became an unofficial social worker, and even an abyss, to gain the confidence of the hesitant population. Last year, she opened a blockage in a kitchen basin of patients in exchange for his promise to undergo an examination, where the man, in the late 1950s, was almost isolated, and it was believed that he was suffering from multiple chronic diseases, but he refused to obtain help.

“Had it not been for Lizi’s insistence on the man’s door, he would have been dead in his home.”

The Holmes team has so far reached 164 patients who were unlikely to ask for help before visiting the emergency department.

According to an internal analysis, this preventive approach to the National Health Services Authority provided more than 170,000 pounds for only five patients. Most of this savings are mainly due to their lack of need to a hospital bed (2089 pounds per patient per day).

It is expected that the savings that the National Health Services Authority will achieve will rise to millions of pounds throughout the Raylands.

Preventive model

Experts believe that this preventive model is the only way to save the British health system, which is now spent seven billion pounds annually on deficit subsidies, more than it spends on defense. It is estimated that the treatment of long -term disease costs the economy more than 300 billion pounds annually.

One in 10 people in Britain and Wales receive either disability or deficit subsidy, and the number has risen from 2.8 million people in 2019 to four million.

The government estimates the cost of long -term treatment at more than 300 billion pounds annually, equivalent to once and a half budgets for the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in Stretting.

With the exacerbation of poverty in Britain, the challenges of British health services are increasing, as a study conducted by the Joseph Runthry Foundation in 2014 indicated that 29 billion pounds of the spending of health service was linked to the poorest areas, where the population was more ill and more likely to use the emergency department. On the “Guardian”

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Hospitalization

It has become clear that poverty not only threatens the quality of the life of individuals in Britain, but also puts a huge burden on the entire health care system. Without real reforms that focus on community protection and care, hospitalization in Britain will remain a haven for the poor more than a medical service.

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Blackpool records the highest death rate

Poor Blackpool residents suffer from difficulty in obtaining treatment. From the source

The death rate between those under the age of 75 in Blackpool, the worst in Britain, is due to cancer and cardiovascular disease, with average age of 73 years, that is, six years younger than average across other countries. The average number of drug deaths in Blackpool is four times the average number of deaths in other areas, and the weakness of the smoking death rate is almost. The highest mortality in the region is due to alcohol, and it has recorded the highest rate of serious mental illness.

The deaths caused by alcohol, drugs or suicide are the highest in Britain.

In 2021, then the then Minister of Health, Sajid Javed, delivered a speech in Blackpool, in which he described the tremendous differences in accessing health care and its results related to race and social and economic status, as a “varying disease”. Last week, his successor, Wes Streeting, also chose the city of Blackpool to deliver his first speech on health disparities, as he pledged in this speech to ensure that further funding of the National Health Services Authority was directed to poor areas to help address the problem of the lack of doctors and the length of care waiting.

He said: «The Health Services Authority does not make a sufficient effort to treat the unfair method in which diseases appear in our country.”

Preventing the continuation of chronic diseases that are transmitted across generations from the tasks of a national initiative called “Blackpool Peter Start”, and it combines the Health Services Authority and the National Association to prevent cruelty to children, the local council, and the police, and most importantly, a team of six reliable local parents, known as “community coordinators”, who have greater experience in gaining the confidence of families from the official authorities.

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A difficult situation

Volunteers distribute food in Blackpool. From the source

The use of the Blackpool area for the values ​​of the community and local fathers, who are employed by the National Assembly to prevent cruelty to children, who are often recruited through Facebook, are very important to the health of children.

The head of the Raylands Pillar in Lancaster, Jenny Armmer, said that families in the most deprived areas of the city are afraid to report a difficult living situation for fear that “social services” will take their children to take care of them.

“The lack of socially marginalized groups in the government is understandable.”

She added that «the message of the National Health Services Authority and other institutions considers that poor health is the behavior of the poor population, and this is the shame of those who live a very difficult life.

. The deficiency in doctors and nurses leads to the dependence of the population on the emergency as a last resort.

. Some areas have launched preventive initiatives for diseases with the aim of treating cases before they turned into crises.