Picture of health
How many photographs of the Taoiseach in his shorts do we need to make Ireland healthy, asks Maurice Gueret, as he eyes up a geriatric name change
Leo and Paschal
Healthy Ireland is a Government initiative designed to snap as many photographs as possible of ministers doing, saying, or launching healthy things. They do a smashing PR job. Their online gallery has about 18 photos of Leo in his shorts, and nine of Paschal’s bicycle helmet. It was an Enda Kenny initiative, alongside the vow to consign trolleys to history. Politicians are plastered all over the healthyireland.ie website — holding placards, fingering fruit, launching food pyramids, and riding exercise bikes in business suits. Shameless hunger for publicity in an arena that favours back-slapping over self-critique. Healthy Ireland also excels with corporate guff-speak, assisted, no doubt, by all 35 members of its multi-stakeholder national forum. They have cross-sectoral partnerships, whole-system approaches, platforms to mobilise communities into national movements, high-level implementation plans, framework documents and communications channels to beat the band. And did I mention solidarity, transparency, sustainability and the all-important cabinet committee on social policy?
More snipes
Some of the Healthy Ireland punchlines lack bite. Last summer, it launched a campaign asking folks to share salad with their friends. The ‘pause the boxset’ slogan was weak, too. One of the more tangible things Healthy Ireland does is pay for surveys, and the 2018 results were released recently. It’s a good thing that the number of tobacco smokers in Ireland has declined to 20pc for the first time, but e-cigarette outlets are mushrooming, and I’d like to see politicians and physicians get their heads together to decide whether vaping is or isn’t a good thing. The survey tells us that we drink a lot more water than milk, which is no bad thing, but we’re a nation of binge boozers in the evenings. Three pints of beer, or a single 750ml bottle of wine is now defined as a binge. By my calculations, Irish tills ring through 100 million wine-bottle sales a year. One simple measure that we could all take to reduce consumption is to choose half or quarter bottles instead. But invariably, the selection is limited. Miniature wines can be of poor quality, many having travelled further than Paddington Bear to get here. Far be it for me to tell the drinks industry how to operate. But if I was looking for a gap in a more health-conscious market, I’d be improving quality and choice in the marketplace for snipes, or demi bottles.
Side passage
I have to thank a retired doctor down the country for sending me a new take on a very old joke in the medical suppository genre. A man was telling a friend that he went to the doctor. “I was given this yoke and told to put it in me back passage. But we don’t have a back passage in our house, so I put it in the side passage. Well, I may as well have stuck it up my arse for all the good it did me!”
Age old
A happy camper has been in touch to praise the great care received in both the Mercy and the Cork University Hospitals. From the ambulance crew to nurses’ aides, from physiotherapists to the surgeon, they were all “truly fantastic”. His only criticism is official use of the word “geriatric” for what he describes as “oldies”! In truth, the word geriatric applies more to the doctor than to the patient. It derives from Geras, the god of old age; and the Greek word
iatros, which means doctor. I looked through the current Irish Medical Directory to see how geriatricians like to call themselves — medicine for the older person; medicine for the elderly; and age-related healthcare specialist are modern variants. More are also adding ‘stroke medicine’ to their title. I have no quibble with geriatricians. This country is served very well by their very public service and we can all look forward to golden care as oldies.
Kit amnesty
I like to keep an eye across the sea to see what the British NHS is up to. Many of its good (and bad) ideas are adopted here, often a decade later. The latest wheeze is the crutch amnesty. Patients and families are being asked to return wheelchairs, walking frames, support sticks and crutches. Only about one-in-five crutches makes it back into second use, though frames fare a little better. A small deposit might be all that’s required to improve return and re-use of equipment.