People in Bolton are spending longer suffering from poor health than across the rest of the country.
This is according to the last public health report released last week, which reported men in Bolton spent around 16 years in poor health, which is longer than the regional or national average.
But women were found to have spent around 18 years of their life in poor health, which is around the same as the national average.
Bolton Council cabinet member for adults, health and wellbeing Cllr Sean Fielding said: “In this country over the last 13 years it is undeniable that there have been cuts to the public sector across the board.”
He said these included cuts to the NHS, to public health, schools and others.
Cllr Fielding said: “And all of these things are things that the report, and a multitude of other reports from people who know far more about public health than I do, show have a direct implication, negatively, on people’s healthcare and on their life expectancy.”
Cllr Fielding presented the report to a meeting of Bolton Council’s cabinet alongside public health director Lynn Donkin.
The report said: “Healthy life expectancy is the average number of years a baby born in a particular area can be expected to live in good health, if they kept that area and time’s age-specific death rates and ratings of health the same for the rest of their life.
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“This refers to self-rated health, but self-rated health is a good predictor of service usage.
“Healthy life expectancy at birth is significantly worse than England (2018-20) for males although latest figures for females it is similar to England.”
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Responding to the report at cabinet Cllr John Walsh said that having looked over old documents from the past 50 years it was important to look at it in context.
Cllr Walsh said: “It shows the sort of gaps that have been talked about, the disparities that have been talked about, the disparities that have been talked about, male and female, Bolton and the rest of England, different wards within the borough.”
He said that this showed that “actually the figures are not hugely different” over that period of 50 years, which included different governments, council leaderships and other factors.
Cllr Walsh said that this showed the need for the issues of health disparities to be looked at in far greater depth.
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