Government is ignoring “ticking time bomb” of deteriorating population health, says BMA

The UK government must regard the population’s health as crucial to sustainable economic growth rather than being dependent on a prosperous economy, the BMA has said.In a report entitled Valuing Health,1 the BMA has said that the government is ignoring the “ticking time-bomb of deteriorating population health” and that what “little action” it does take is “narrowly focused on the NHS, rather than the wider determinants.”UK life expectancy increased throughout the 20th century, with an average increase of three years every decade. However, those improvements have been stalling since 2011, and the covid-19 pandemic has brought a decline in life expectancy.2“Healthcare is not the primary determinant of health,” said the report. “It is estimated that in high-income countries, only about 20% of the variance in health is explained by healthcare . . . The conditions in which people are conceived, born, grow, live, work and age are the prime determinants…
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