UK’s health performance declining compared with 14 EU countries over past 20 years

According to Murray, “Further progress in premature mortality from several major causes, such as cardiovascular diseases and cancers, will probably require improved public health, prevention, early intervention, and treatment activities. The growing burden of disability, particularly from mental disorders, substance use, musculoskeletal disorders, and falls deserves an integrated and strategic response.”

Writing in a linked Comment, Edmund Jessop from the UK Faculty of Public Health in London, UK points out, “The UK has done very well in the past 20 years in many areas.  As Murray and colleagues show, mortality has reduced and several aspects of diet have improved, with drops in disability-adjusted life-years for all dietary risk factors examined. The UK has stronger tobacco control than does any other country in Europe, and we continue to enjoy some of the safest roads in Europe.”                                        

But he cautions, “There is still plenty of room for bold action by politicians and the body politic: plain packaging for cigarettes, minimum pricing for alcohol, banning of trans fats, improved control of hypertension, and attention to psychiatric disorders. Alternatively, the UK can continue to languish at the bottom of European league tables.”

In an Editorial accompanying the publication, Dr Richard Horton, Editor in Chief of The Lancet, describes the study as “an independent scientific report card on decades of NHS reorganisations that have often had more to do with political ideology than sound evidence.”  He adds that, “The GBD results do not by themselves offer definitive prescriptions for the predicaments they describe. And they do not provide a simple verdict on the performance of the UK health system. But they do offer a quantitative means to monitor measures of health and disease and to enable more rational review and discussion of health priorities. This work is an important step forward for health policy.”

Source: The Lancet