We’re better off and living longer

The PM should respond that the NHS’S problems are not financial but cultural

The new decade opens auspiciously with evidence from around the world that hundreds of millions of people are much better off, better educated and living longer compared to just a few decades ago.

Dr Max Roser of Oxford University, who crunches the relevant data, reports that in just 30 years, the numbers living in extreme poverty have dropped precipitously from almost half the world’s population to just 10 per cent – 250million in India alone.

Globally, life expectancy over the same period is up an impressive 20 years due primarily to a precipitous fall in infant mortality rates that has saved the lives of 120 million children.

And while one might suppose this might aggravate the problems of overpopulation, it is offset by a halving of the fertility rate (the average number of children per family).

The challenges confronting our newly elected Prime Minister are trivial by comparison. To the perennial whingeing that the health service is being “brought to its knees” by underfunding, he should respond that its problems are not financial but cultural. Terminating the perverse incentives for family doctors to overtreat their patients – as Dr Fitzpatrick described last week – would release billions of pounds.

And top of the Brexit agenda should be the abolition of the European Working Time Directive severely constraining the number of hours worked by junior doctors. This has required the introduction of a shift system in hospitals, playing havoc with training and continuity of care. There is more on the same theme, the gist being – as indicated by the striking improvement of the lives of so many over the past 30 years – that most problems, intelligently addressed, are soluble.

Go with the Flo

This year marks the bicentenary of that most eminent of eminent Victorians, Florence Nightingale, born on May 12 1820 and named after the city of her birth. Among the many celebratory events, Grantham Hospital in Lincolnshire will be opening a garden in her honour – particularly appropriate given her championing of the value of flowers and greenery in promoting recovery.

“It is generally said their effect is upon the mind,” she wrote, “but it is not less so on the body on that account.”

The Grantham project, financed by a charitable trust GROW (Gardens Restore Our Well Being) is the brainchild of landscape gardener Nikki Applewhite spurred into action – when receiving radiotherapy for breast cancer – by the dispiriting state of the hospital’s grounds.

Generally, the hospital garden is making something of a comeback though given the pressure on space often has to be ingeniously located – at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital the bushes and shrubbery are planted on an abandoned boiler house roof.

They are certainly immensely popular. A recent survey at Salisbury District Hospital found that 100 per cent of patients said the garden alleviated the stresses and aggravation of their time spent as an inpatient.

For Nikki Applewhite, this is Longevity: we are living longer than just a few decades ago just the beginning. “Our mission is to carpet the outside spaces of every hospital in Lincolnshire with gardens,” she says.

Florence Nightingale would have approved.

Sew far so good

The saliva-stimulating remedy for those with a dry mouth of a rolled up ball of cotton thread placed between gum and cheek has prompted the alternative suggestion of a raisin or sultana (“much tastier if swallowed”) or the traditional cure favoured by the Apaches of Arizona of a small pebble placed under the tongue.

Meanwhile, a reader reports a further interesting role for cotton as used by the team of seamstresses who created the Queen’s wedding dress.

“Should a finger be pricked while sewing, the application of a well chewed length of thread removes any drop of blood from the fabric. (It works!)”