Austerity is hurting our health, say researchers
Reuters UK - 4 hours ago
LONDON
(Reuters) - Austerity is having a devastating effect on health in
Europe and North America, driving suicide, depression and infectious ...
Austerity is hurting our health, say researchers
By Kate Kelland
LONDON |
Mon Apr 29, 2013 12:11am BST
(Reuters) - Austerity is having a devastating effect on health in Europe
and North America, driving suicide, depression and infectious diseases
and reducing access to medicines and care, researchers said on Monday.
Detailing a decade of research,
Oxford University political economist David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu,
an assistant professor of medicine and an epidemiologist at Stanford
University, said their findings show austerity is seriously bad for
health.
In
a book to be published this week, the researchers say more than 10,000
suicides and up to a million cases of depression have been diagnosed
during what they call the "Great Recession" and its accompanying
austerity across Europe and North America.
In Greece,
moves like cutting HIV prevention budgets have coincided with rates of
the AIDS-causing virus rising by more than 200 percent since 2011 -
driven in part by increasing drug abuse in the context of a 50 percent
youth unemployment rate.
Greece also experienced its first malaria outbreak in decades following budget cuts to mosquito-spraying programs.
And more than five million Americans have lost access to healthcare
during the latest recession, they argue, while in Britain, some 10,000
families have been pushed into homelessness by the government's
austerity budget.
"Our politicians
need to take into account the serious - and in some cases profound -
health consequences of economic choices," said David Stuckler, a senior
researcher at Oxford University and co-author The Body Economic: Why
Austerity Kills
"The harms we have found include HIV and malaria outbreaks, shortages of essential medicines, lost healthcare
access, and an avoidable epidemic of alcohol abuse, depression and
suicide," he said in a statement. "Austerity is having a devastating
effect."
Previous studies by
Stuckler published in journals such as The Lancet and the British
Medical Journal have linked rising suicide rates in some parts of Europe
to biting austerity measures, and found HIV epidemics to be spreading
amid cutbacks in services to vulnerable people.
But Stuckler and Basu said negative public health effects are not inevitable, even during the worst economic disasters.
Using data from the Great Depression of the 1930s, to post-communist Russia
and from some examples of the current economic downturn, they say
financial crises can be prevented from becoming epidemics - if
governments respond effectively.
As
an example, they say, Sweden's active labor market programs helped the
numbers of suicides to fall there during its recession, a big rise in
unemployment. Neighboring countries with no such programs saw large
increases in suicides.
And during
the 1930s depression in the United States, each extra $100 of relief
spending from the American New Deal led to about 20 fewer deaths per
1,000 births, four fewer suicides per 100,000 people and 18 fewer
pneumonia deaths per 100,000 people.
"Ultimately
what we show is that worsening health is not an inevitable consequence
of economic recessions. It's a political choice," Basu said in the
statement.
(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Stephen Powell)
end quote from:
Austerity is hurting our health, say researchers
My son who has a degree in Nursing was telling me that when Medicare in the U.S. came into being it caused an exponential drop in diseases like TB and Pneumonia. It looks like Austerity may be bringing back many diseases including an increase in depression and suicides as well. Seemingly small changes to how humanity functions can create extreme changes for us all in many ways both seen and unseen by most people. So, in a way the costs of austerity to society likely outweigh any long term benefits if looked at through this lens of health, suicide and disease.
I suppose some might take another point of view entirely by saying, "Only the strongest will survive" through austerities. So, this likely would mean, "Only the most ruthless, intelligent, and with the very strongest types of DNA will survive at all through difficult austerities both now and in the future.
For example, here is one repeat quote from above that everyone in Europe and the U.S. should be alarmed about:
"In Greece,
moves like cutting HIV prevention budgets have coincided with rates of
the AIDS-causing virus rising by more than 200 percent since 2011 -
driven in part by increasing drug abuse in the context of a 50 percent
youth unemployment rate. end repeat partial quote from above.
Then again here is another repeat quote regarding Sweden's answer to part of the problem: next repeat quote from above:
"As
an example, they say, Sweden's active labor market programs helped the
numbers of suicides to fall there during its recession, a big rise in
unemployment. Neighboring countries with no such programs saw large
increases in suicides. "
So, even during downturns and austerities if countries are more efficiently looking after their people they can reduce problems like Suicide etc. through this efficiency. Since unemployment likely will stay like this for some time around the world, thinking about preventing suicides and disease during times of austerity as well as times of plenty might be useful for every nation and it also would reduce health care costs in general because preventative medicine is always much less expensive than after the fact care.
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