UK named the sick man of Europe

Our sickness model of health isn't working, sound the klaxon, the policy makers have woken up to reality.

Oct 23, 2024

A recent report by the Commission for Health and Prosperity stated that the UK was now the ‘sick man of Europe’, a phrase usually used to describe countries going through severe economic turmoil or social unrest. Except the Commission meant it more literally, bluntly stating that the nation’s health challenges had reached historic proportions. Healthy life expectancy for women was in decline and the number of people with a long-term condition was rising, with the overall prospect being “a slightly longer life but a higher proportion of it spent in poor health.”

It concluded, with staggering obviousness, that our sickness model of health policy, ie turning up for people when they are already ill, was not working and instead we needed “a bold realignment of health policy to meet 21^st Century challenges”, aka “a health creation system, that works alongside our existing sickness service.” In other words, a preventative, primary-care led system that “focuses intervention on the places where people really spend their time.” They meant workplaces, football clubs and pharmacies, but might I suggest their homes?!

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Sound the klaxon, bang the gong, unfurl the banners, the policy proposers have caught up with common sense.

That while we should strive to give people the fastest access to the most innovative medicines, treatments and diagnostics possible, we should also recognise that more health funding in the current model has not meant better health. In other words, that prevention really is better than cure on every level.

This is not the first time we’ve faced a reckoning on population health. The Victorians reacted to infectious diseases with major public health programmes, while post-war Britain founded the NHS. What are we doing? Seemingly burying our heads in the sand and hoping that childhood asthma, ADHD and allergies will stop rising? That the statistic that 1 in 2 of us will be diagnosed with cancer will what, just go away? (Note: the lifetime risk of developing cancer for someone who was born in 1930 was around 1 in 3. But, by 1960, for those born in that year, lifetime risk had risen to the new figure of 1 in 2.)

We need to admit that we are amid an epidemic of mental health disorders and chronic disease, and we need to do something about it. And I believe that starts at home.

Today we spend a staggering 90% of our time indoors, and yet indoor air can be up to five times more polluted than outside and according to a global survey 77% of us are completely unaware of this. It’s part of an overwhelming misunderstanding about the impact on our health of our domestic environments, especially for our children whose bedrooms rank as some of the most polluted.