Hats off to Andy Burnham MP, the newly appointed Secretary of State for Health, who finally acknowledged that just perhaps ... the NHS should be looking at preventative measures.
This is in stark contrast to the typical approach which waits for people to get progressively sicker, then offers palliative measures to people in certain postcodes.
The NHS is already in a serious predicament with forecasted shortfalls due to come through by 2011 to the tune of between 8 and 10 billion pounds! Yes, waiting lists for surgery have fallen from 18 months to virtually nothing. But long term sustainability is surely an issue that we can't keep sweeping under the rug.
Extrapolating current trends leads any sane person to realise that 10 years from now the NHS will be completely ineffective because it just won't be able to cope with the volume of sick people. And many of these could have been prevented by changing the existing paradigm rather than coming out with schemes like polypills which are nothing more than stop gap measures.
Most of the illnesses that will burden the NHS of the future are preventable by educating people on improving their health today ... not telling them to eat less pork sausages and bacon and "get active"!
Mr Burnham seems like a breath of fresh air during a particularly sordid time for MP's. Let's see if he can actually make a difference.
When prime time television isn't filled with ads for tasty baked chocolate treats for kids, then perhaps we will have made progress. When supermarket trolleys aren't laden with cheap processed meat, dairy, low fat garbage, refined carbohydrates and booze ... then just maybe the NHS will have a glimmer of hope with respect to long term viability.
Until then, drink up and stock up your pantries with dead food. You can always go on another diet in the new year. When things really get bad you can then get the excess lard surgically removed. Assuming you're in the right postcode.
Or people can wake up and start to learn how to consume food that nourishes them.
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