Liam Murphy

The average Life expectancy has fallen yet again in Scotland, with the average for men dropping to 76.5 and 80.7 for women.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/367835/life-expectancy-scotland-by-age/

Professor Gerry McCartney of Glasgow University, had his say on the issue, highlighting key issues at hand as to why there has been a recent fall in the average expectancy.

linking to the inflation crisis, he said: “Over the last 12 to 18 months inflation has been dispositionally high for those already on lower income so people who live in draftier housing or who are dependent on pre-payment meters, faced higher inflation than the general public.

“We estimated around a 6% increase in mortality rates from the inflation scene over the last year.”

Many factors are brought up when discussing the recent issue that is at hand, such as underlying health issues, diet, lifestyle choices, and most importantly, COVID.

COVID is an underlying issue that highlights the lowering of the average life expectancy, as proven in the last 3 years.

Professor McCartney discussed what the indirect issues regarding COVID and how they link to the current issue at hand.

He said: “Some of the impacts are social isolation, loss of income and employment. it’s about missed healthcare opportunities such as undiagnosed cancer and people not attending the GP for other things they would’ve done during that peak pandemic period.”

linking this can have major impacts on the average life expectancy, having underlying issues going untreated only leads to more mortalities. Lifestyle also has an impact when it comes to this and the job of the government must be better, according to dietician Kerri Major.

When discussing the need for support from the government and relating to the excess eating of fast food, she believes it is not a lost cause yet.

She said: “I don’t think we are fighting a losing battle, but I think there needs to be a lot more work and support from the government as that is where it stems from, how much food costs which is often what it comes down to especially in areas of big deprivation.”

Public Health Consultant at Public Health Scotland and Clinical Lead at the Scottish Public Health Observatory, Margaret Douglas, has said that there is a clear issue when it comes to finding the main source of what is causing the life expectancy to constantly fall, saying there’s more to it than just COVID.

She said: “We have seen that there has been for most of this year and last year that there were higher death rates than we expected which can’t be fully explained by COVID cases, so we are concerned that something else is going on.”

Margaret then goes on to discuss the importance of what the pandemic has done to certain groups, leading to more health inequalities.

She said: “We know that the pandemic has affected very many of the same group of people who were already the most vulnerable, and on top of that, there is the cost of living crisis again affecting all the groups of people.”

Margaret says throughout the many impacts that have caused the life expectancy to fall, including the indirect impact of COVID on a lot of people including the economic issue and the feeling of loneliness that affects mental health.