Video: Your views on the North-South divide

THE deep divide in health between North and South has been a fact of life for centuries.

Yet it remains shocking that far from narrowing, the gap is growing, beginning before a child is even born as inequalities pass from generation to generation.

A boy born today in Hull can expect to live to 76 – seven years less than a boy in East Dorset – while a girl born in the city will live to 80, six years less than their counterpart in Dorset.

Men aged 65 in Hull can expect to live another 17 years on average, compared to a further 21 in Harrow in London, while women aged 65 in the city can expect another 19 years, compared to 24 years in Camden in London.

The founders of the NHS had anticipated it would dramatically improve the lot of the poor, who had previously been denied ready access to health services.

And there can be little doubt there have been dramatic improvements across the country and across all social classes.

But there is only so much that the NHS can do – and it is wider social and economic factors among them income, housing, educational access and attainment, which play key roles in determining life expectancy and how many years of healthy life people can expect.

A study by Manchester University academics published in the British Medical Journal in 2011 found the health divide between North and South was now at its widest for 40 years.

The analysis found the chances of dying below the age of 75 were 20 per cent higher in the North of England in 2008 – compared to 16 per cent higher in 1965.

Experts said the South’s greater access to education, transport and other resources, even for those on low incomes, explained the difference.

In perhaps the starkest inequalities, a man living in Richmond-upon-Thames in Surrey can expect to live in good health until he is 70 – some 86 per cent of his life. But in Barnsley he will on average be 55 when his health deteriorates – 10 years before pensionable age. For women, illness will on average strike at 57 in Barnsley, compared to 72 in Richmond.

According to the latest figures from Public Health England, people in South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, Hull and northern Lincolnshire are at least 40 per cent more likely to suffer a premature death than those in the best performing parts of the South.

In Hull, which has the worst health overall in the region and some of the worst in England, 375 people for every 100,000 die early compared to 200 in Wokingham in Berkshire, usually due to heart disease, respiratory ailments, cancer or liver problems.

Half Hull’s residents are among the 20 per cent most deprived in England, with a third of its youngsters living in poverty. Nearly 30 per cent of adults smoke and only 43 per cent of adults are physically active – the worst rate in the country.

GP Dan Roper, chairman of NHS Hull Clinical Commissioning Group, has worked for the last 27 years at a surgery in the city, barely 15 minutes’ walk from where he was born. Travel just four miles from his practice in the relatively prosperous western outskirts of Hull and people on average live eight years less.

He said the main cause of health inequality was poverty.

“This can be manifested in lifestyle in the choices that people make around smoking, drinking and diet – the evidence is that people during this recession have been eating less healthily,” he said.

“Another problem that we increasingly see is mental stress, depression, low mood and something else, not so much now but certainly when the recession started, is relationship breakdown. In our practice we have a number of people who have to work away from home, perhaps in London, and come back on weekends often leaving women at home looking after a couple of kids who are relatively unsupported and that causes a lot of strain on families.

“For colleagues in other parts of Hull, these issues are magnified and are obviously worse in poorer communities.”

He said there is no practical way to match health standards in Richmond-on-Thames or Wokingham – other than moving Hull south – but believes there is scope to match other cities in the North.

One tactic is to improve health literacy, especially among the young.

Funding remains tight but where possible cash is also being used on community projects such as the £219,000 in NHS cash to keep two swimming pools at Ennerdale Leisure Centre in the city open until 2015. Social prescribing is also being introduced so people are referred for exercise, weight-loss treatments and even debt relief management.

He said health was improving in Hull – but it was improving more quickly in other parts of the country, while the most fit and able were leaving the city.

Experts say reducing the gap in health outcomes by focusing on economic regeneration and job creation will bring benefits for the entire country by reducing illnesses caused by deprivation, which account for productivity losses, reduced tax revenue, higher welfare payments and increased treatment costs.

This approach is likely to be a key part of an initiative launched by regional bosses of Public Health England to tackle the North-South health divide and get a fairer deal for people in the North.

The North Health Equity project will bring together health officials, academic experts, council chiefs and the private, voluntary and community sectors to find solutions to bridge the gap, looking at all the factors that influence health and wellbeing in the face of expectations that the North will lag behind in the recovery following the recession.

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