Socio-economic health inequalities: ever-lasting facts or amenable to change?

• Published in: International journal of preventive medicine Vol. 4; no. 6; pp. 621 - 623
• Main Author: Kamangar, Farin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Iran Medknow Publications & Media Pvt. Ltd 01-06-2013; Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd; Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications
• Subjects: Antibiotics; Epidemics; Famine; Health behavior; Health care; Health disparities; Hypertension; Infectious diseases; Life expectancy; Mortality; Neighborhoods; Obesity; Poverty; Public health; Social classes; Social security; Society; Socioeconomic factors; Studies; Typhus; Violence; Iran; United States > US; Baltimore Maryland
• ISSN: 2008-7802; 2008-8213

In this issue of the journal, Ghobadi et al., [1] have demonstrated that in Kurdistan Province of Iran individuals in lower socio-economic groups are more likely to have several risk factors for non-communicable diseases, including insufficient consumption of fruit and vegetables, insufficient consumption of fish, high consumption of unhealthy fat and oils, and hypertension. [...]the decline of famine and infectious diseases, which has been brought to us by a host of factors - including the widespread availability and low cost of food, clean water, vaccines, and antibiotics - did not lead to the disappearance of differences in life expectancy across socio-economic groups. The health of a society is tightly knit into the fabric of the society, including its politics, its economics, and the attitude of its people. [...]if we would like to improve health for all, and to reduce health inequalities, we must not rely solely on the governmental health-care system or on private medical care. The adverse climatic conditions which contributed to the failure of its crops and to the sickness of its bodies, would not have caused such terrible ravages, if it had been free, educated and well-to-do ...such an epidemic dissemination of typhus had only been possible under the wretched conditions of life that poverty and lack of culture had created in Upper Silesia ...The logical answer to the question as to how conditions similar to those that have unfolded before our eyes in Upper Silesia can be prevented in the future is, therefore, very easy and simple: education, with its daughters, liberty and prosperity."