Via The Star, a column by Joe Fiorito about a diabetes information meeting: The rich get rich, and the poor get sick. Excerpt:
Dennis Raphael spoke first. He is the one I’d come to hear. He is a health policy guy from York University. He pinned health and wealth together, or rather he pinned illness directly on poverty:
The death rate of the poorest people has risen from 17 to 25 people per 100,000, since the mid-1980s.
He said social injustice is killing us on a grand scale, and it wasn’t just him saying this, it was the World Health Organization.
He did a diabetes study a while back, and found a relationship between Type 2 diabetes and income: If you make less than $30,000 a year, your chances of developing Type 2 diabetes are double those of people making $80,000 a year.
My neighbour nodded in agreement.
But — and this is an outrage — the people in Raphael’s study who developed the disease said they could not afford the diet they were supposed to follow.
He said our rate of poverty is double that of the Scandinavian countries, but poor people have better benefits, and better health, there.
His observation?
“Our economy is greater than it was in the 1970s, but the distribution of income is worse.”
His answer?
“We have to up the benefit levels, up the minimum wage, develop a national housing strategy, and close the gap between rich and poor.”
Comments