Escape from the country: rural life is getting dangerous

You’d think that living in the countryside would be good for you.

Less traffic, cleaner air, the chance to enjoy wonderful, brisk walks while you escape the stresses of day-to-day living.

Unfortunately, it now appears that in some cases, rural living may well be bad for your health.

It’s worrying that new statistics show death rates in some areas of Scotland are increasing, with a variety of factors being blamed.

Austerity is one. As councils and health boards struggled to cope with tighter budgets it meant they had to look at efficiencies. In some cases the cuts made were particularly severe.

Often they involved concentrating resources in what was considered to be areas of greatest need with the greatest number of people.

It’s argued that it is far easier, and more cost-effective, to create “hubs” where people can be served or treated under one roof.

However, the impact, as many of our readers will know, is that such moves leave those in more remote areas isolated from the very services they need and have paid for.

All well and good suggesting that a patient travels a few miles into their main conurbation instead of having the services come to them.

But what happens when that person’s bus service has also been rationalised somewhere along the line?

What happens when they don’t have the mobility or confidence to travel into a busier town or village?

The likelihood is that they may simply sit and suffer, disappearing from the view of those very services that could prolong their life.

This simply isn’t right or fair. Those people in the country, and who may have done so all their lives, should not be treated as second-class citizens just because they don’t live in the likes of Edinburgh, Glasgow or Aberdeen.