Health gap blamed in 'excess deaths' of blacks

[carzen]

Former Surgeon General David Satcher said Friday at a conference on racial disparities in America's health care system that more than 83,500 "excess deaths" among black Americans annually could be prevented if the "black-white mortality gap" could be eliminated.

In an interview at the Morehouse School of Medicine, the former surgeon general and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 5,000 African-American babies die a year who would live if a gap in treatment didn't exist.

.......

"It's the same for diabetes, cancer, other diseases," he said. "If treatment were equal, including access, many African-Americans who die would not."

He said the main reason for the gap is what he called "the uns — people who are uninsured, underinsured, underserved, underrepresented, uninformed and who are untrusting because of experiences they've had. We have to focus on those uns."



http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2006/10/06/1007meshmorehouse.html

[jwirr]

1. This is a very important issue. A single payer universal health

care program will go a long way toward answering the uninsured but it will not completely solve the problem. There is a great need for qualified health care providers who are willing to work in the so called "depressed areas" of this country. You see the same problem on rural reservations. As to the education and trust they are both VERY big problems and it will take time and effective programs to change it.