Reality in stats?

Just as i was starting to finally have a miniscule spark of interest for "health and society" module (all thanks to today's lecture by dr david mcneish) i fell sick and had to be absent for the next strand 2 lecture :S.

so what is this strand 2 thing? It's basically the art side of my degree.

It's so confusing in the sense that at home, medicine will be heavily regarded as a science degree. Over here lecturers will call it a vocational degree, with some art subjects (eg sociology, politics) related to it.

So we do stuff like ethics, learn bout the legal system and convert our anatomy lecture theatre into a greek style senate to debate out issues based on this.

We define the undefinable term of health, illness, disease and how it relates to gender, society, poverty, family structures, cultures etc.

Based on what i read, definition of health depends on the targeted community. for example, the young men regard health as physical fitness (hence all the sports and gym usage), young women as energy and vitality, middle age as well being, and older ppl as ability to do stuff.

To sum that up i'll just say the idea of health is having a realistic goal towards your wants and expectations of your physical body, that will affect all other aspects of life.

I mean we humans are almost never satisfied...

Then there are lectures to correlate health and poverty, as well as discuss social deprivation vs health.

It can be quite shocking. For a person from Malaysia, I have always had high regard of the way the British Government run their country (with a number of mishaps, of course). But the stats is a total shocker!

Malaysia was trying to counter problems of inequalities in terms of economy, politics and utilites a long time ago...Even before the birth of the nation. I've to say that they have succeeded in reducing disparity, but there's still a lot of room for improvement. To find out bout that, just take a car ride to a remote town. Or if u are stuck in somewhere called KL, just venture out into the poorer rural areas which are usually not so accessible.

No doubt, policies used in Malaysia have been controversial until now, having many supporters and opposition. Issues raised were mainly racial, especially since the National Economic Policy was quite race-based. It became the fuel of many oppositon political parties, since Malaysian politics is still sadly greatly based on race too (UMNO, MIC, MCA, and non-bumi based DAP)But it prove effective nonetheless.

Britain on the other hand is always regarded as the 'role model' of Malaysia like it or not. Even the foundation of Malaysia was greatly based on the country that colonised them. After all, governing such a large empire at that time was definitely not an easy task. Of course, Dr M wanted to change that and pushed towards the 'Look East Policy' and changed role models to Japan and South Korea. But deep inside, many development programmes are still based on the UK and the US. If not, you probably wouldn't see British international companies in Malaysia, or see Malaysian government sponsored children in UK.
Hence, being a Malaysian, Britain seems to be quite an ideal country that takes care of her citizens. What more, they even have the ability to act as "charitable" organizations, 'helping' in warzones with loads of money to spare.

But the reality is just too shocking. Dr McNeish said there were 69% of UK disabled people having an income of less than 800 pounds per month. That is simply too little to survive in a city. U probably can survive in a small rural area that has a lower living cost. But those places do not provide facilities for disabled people, and they probably do not have good access to government funding programmes for the disabled there. Most have 75 pounds or less to spend on accommodation. And with rising fuel prices (which are currently around 92 pence here) heating and transport cost a bomb! And how would anybody in Edinburgh without proper heating? It's been only a week into autumn and i'm already having a cold. Temperature has been going down to minimum of 1-2 C at night. How would homeless/ppl without heating survive without getting sick?

I try to put myself in their shoes, but it's plainly to scary. Yet these ppl remain the happy cheerful friendly ppl u see on the street. Ok, not all of them are that happy and cheerful but if somebody in Malaysia is having the same problem they would probably be cursing everyone alive, from the government to the opposition, their parents to their children and even that little bird in the air wouldn't be spared.

It's scary how life expectancy in Britain was 16 2 centuries ago among manual workers and their families. 16! I'd be dead by now if i were to be in that situation! So probably you can argue that the government has made some progress in reducing disparity.

Now the life expectancy difference between Drumchapel and Bearsden (both suburbs of Glasgow, one being the poor area and one being the opposite) is only 12 years.

12 YEARS?! That's crazy.

You are denied 12 Years of your life just because of your financial circumstance.
And there would probably be much fewer GPs or health service providers in your area.

That's gotta change.
It's scary!