Why is healthy life expectancy in this part of Scotland so shockingly low?

Indeed, someone living a couple of hours’ drive away in Perth and Kinross can expect to live in good health, without serious illness or disability, for a good 13 or 14 years longer.

It is a statistic Irene Campbell, the Labour MP who represents North Ayrshire and Arran, describes as shocking and upsetting. She wants new research to be carried out into the reasons behind it.

“I was massively disappointed and quite upset, really, to see those figures in North Ayrshire,” she told The Scotsman.

Healthy life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years someone can expect to live in good health. Dr Rishma Maini, consultant in public health medicine at Public Health Scotland, said it provides an insight into quality of life.

“Scotland has a history of health inequalities,” she said. “So, we know that, sadly, healthy life expectancy has fallen to a low in the past decade, and there’s lots of reasons around that.

“The drivers of health are very complicated. It’s not just about people’s access to healthcare, it’s not just about their genetics – in fact, that’s a very small part of it.

“It’s actually all about the conditions in which we are born, raised, work, live and age in. So, it’s really those structural determinants, if you like – education, our housing, people living in poverty, transport, those sort of building blocks that impact our health.

“And so you’ll see differences in different parts of the country because obviously there’s differences in those structural factors across the country.

“It’s also about people’s health behaviours – exposure to risk factors like whether people smoke or drink or your diet and so on. And of course, we see a big relationship to poverty and inequality with a lot of those risk factors.”

Ms Campbell, who was previously a manager in the NHS, said there are likely a myriad of factors affecting North Ayrshire’s low healthy life expectancy, and referenced unemployment and underinvestment.

“I think years and years of underinvestment has really taken its toll on the local population,” she added.

Referring to the so-called Glasgow Effect, the MP said: “I’m not quite saying it’s the North Ayrshire Effect, but we need to look at – why has this happened? Why has it worsened over the years? What is the investment going into North Ayrshire compared with other similar populations?

“I think there definitely needs to be some research. But from my perspective as well, I think we really need to try and get investment. We need to get businesses to come and open again in our area.”

Asked why she thought healthy life expectancy in North Ayrshire is the worst in Scotland, Ms Campbell said: “I genuinely don’t know. I actually think that’s a question we should all be asking.”