Η ΑΝΘΡΩΠΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΣΤΑΣΗ ΤΗΣ ΕΥΡΩΠΑΙΚΗΣ ΚΡΙΣΗΣ

Από το έγκριτο επιστημονικό περιοδικο The Lancet, Volume 380, Issue 9846, Page 950, 15 September 2012

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Europe—the great divide

The Lancet

What are Europe's leaders doing? Prime ministers, presidents, and finance ministers have gathered on numerous occasions during the past 3 years for crisis talks about the region's flat-lining economy, and they have failed miserably to produce any meaningful results. Now the European Central Bank has taken up the rescue baton. But in all the discussions about bonds, bailouts, and exits from the eurozone, Europe's policy makers have lost sight of the health and humanitarian disaster unfolding across the region.

Their meagre efforts have done little to help the lives of Europe's citizens, including the 150 000 immigrants in Spain now not eligible to receive free public health care after government austerity measures. They certainly did not help the 77-year-old Greek pensioner who shot himself in the head outside the country's parliament in April in a public act of financial despair. Or the other people—young and old—who have tragically taken their own lives in Greece, Ireland, and Italy because of their desperate feelings of hopelessness about their future.

Even outside the eurozone, people in Europe are struggling. Last week, Save the Children released a report—It Shouldn't Happen Here—documenting poverty among 3·5 million children in the UK (a figure which is set to soar by 400 000 by 2015). The report finds that children are going without a warm coat or new shoes, one in eight of the poorest children go without at least one hot meal a day, and parents are eating less, so that their children do not go hungry. It should provide sober reading for the coalition government that claimed it was committed to eradicating poverty.

A Review by Michael Marmot and colleagues published in The Lancet today also offers a reality check for policy makers. It shows that health inequities are increasing in many European countries and the 2008 economic meltdown—and the response to it—has exacerbated the health divide. Such inequities arise from inequities in the distribution of power, money, and resources. Europe's leaders take note: Europe is in the midst of a crisis, a human one.