Oldham folk still dying too soon

A FLAGSHIP pledge to stop Oldhamers dying so much earlier than the rest of England has not only failed but health inequality has widened, according to a damning Commons report published today.

The previous Labour Government set the Department of Health (DoH) the target of reducing the gap in life expectancy between 70 spearhead local authorities — including Oldham — with high deprivation and the England average by 10 per cent by 2010.

The powerful Public Accounts Committee said that, despite the pledge made in 1997 that reducing inequality was a Government priority, it took the DoH nine years to establish it as an NHS priority.

The department failed to deploy its own resources effectively, or coherently and lacked urgency and focus, the report said.

Committee chairman Margaret Hodge said: “A central challenge for all governments is to reduce health inequalities between the affluent and the disadvantaged. The problem is complex but the fact that the gap continue to widen is of great concern, especially against a background of a general improvement in public health over the last decade.

“The Department of Health has been exceptionally slow to tackle this problem. The department knew in 1997, for instance, that certain low-cost treatments, such as those to help smokers quit and those to prevent heart attacks, could have a major effect in deprived areas, but such treatments have still not been adopted on the scale required.”

Latest figures show male life expectancy in Oldham is 75.4 years compared with 77.9 in England. For women in Oldham it is 79.4 years compared with 82 across the country.

The committee said that while it was “heartening” to see the overall improvements in health over the last decade it was of great concerned inequality has increased. It blamed the DoH for missing an opportunity under the revised GP contracts to ensure more doctors worked in deprived areas given the number of GPs per head is well below the number in more affluent areas.

The committee said Government must ensure the funding model for GP consortia corrects the previous shortfalls in the most deprived areas.

The Government will respond to the report within three months.