Diya Baker | sandscoxcharity

Health Policy and Politics

RUNNER UP - SANDS OX CHARITY ESSAY PRIZE 2018 - MEDICAL STUDENT

Diya Baker

A pipe, cigarettes and cigar

Tobacco usurped by corporations from afar

Mesolimbic excitement the addictive source from neurobiology

Detriment to health and wealth, logically

"No more in bars, clubs or pubs they said"

"Choose something else to mess with the head"

Drink more wine, spirits and beer

Forget dependency and addiction they jeer

Scotland beginning to lead the way

"increasing the price of a unit"- won't lead people astray

But nothing to combat sugar and fat

Obesity epidemic and no strategy for that

Doctors prescribe exercise and advised healthy diets

No nutritional education means a reliance on flyers

An apple a day keeps the doctor a way, or so they thought

Now its 5 fruit or vegetables that need to be bought

Expensive marketing campaign and bright bold posters

This will solve the obesity crisis exclaimed the boasters

The problem was clear to see at public health meetings

The aristocratic management with no real experience.

'The proletariat are uneducated and will learn to be healthy'

Do they consider deprivation, poverty and inequality?

A concoction of arrogance, naivety and misinformation

A step in the right direction would be subsidisation

But political collusion ensures corporations remain prosperous

"Let the burden of sugar taxation hit the mass populous"

"Smoking Kills" and causes more lung cancer

"Do you even vape? Or use nicotine patches" a favourite answer

But as with prior examples and the issues they predicate

Is the answer always to medicate?

A brief digestion of the recent public health policy

Money constraints and over-infatuation with the QALY

The NHS- a treasured national institution

Threatened by privatisation and underappreciation

Innovation and necessity is the mother of invention

At this critical juncture two paths remain evolution or regression.