DERRY JOURNAL Editorial: 2025 is the year to address scandalous health inequalities

​It is outrageous in a society considering itself civilised that girls and boys can expect to die years earlier than their peers simply because of economic conditions.

Stormont’s Draft Programme for Government does acknowledge the urgent need to lessen health inequalities. And Health Minister Mike Nesbitt does appear to be taking the matter seriously.

Earlier this year the Department of Health’s ‘Health Inequalities Annual Report 2024’ showed that in Derry and Strabane life expectancy for poorer women had actually declined from 78.1 years to 78 and was 3.5 years less than the Local Government District average (81.5 years).

For poorer men life expectancy increased from 71.1 years to 71.6 years but was still 5.9 years less than the LGD average (77.5 years).

A boy or a man in a more deprived district of Derry thus continues to enjoy a lower life expectancy than a peer of both sexes in countries like North Korea (72.6: 2019), Syria (72.7: 2019) and Libya (75.8: 2019), according to World Health Organisation figures.

Mr. Nesbitt has explicitly acknowledged this as a significant failure.

Noting how two girls born on the same day in a maternity unit in Belfast may exhibit a life expectancy gap of 14.2 years depending on their post code, he said: “In a First World country, a quarter of the way into the 21st century, that simply should not be countenanced.” Correct. Time for concerted action.​​​​

Death by postcode: Male life expectancy has shortened by six months in half a decade