Significant decline in healthy life expectancy for Derry girls and boys linked to regional inequality

The SDLP MLA raised recently published figures by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) that showed worrying declines in healthy life expectancy in the city over recent years.

ONS confirmed that Derry City and Strabane (54.9 years for boys and 54.2 years for girls) had the lowest projected health life expectancy at birth over the 2022-24 period.

“In Derry the figures are deeply concerning,” Mrs. McLaughlin told MLAs at Stormont on Monday. “Boys born in Derry between 2022 and 2024 can expect just 54.9 years of healthy living. That represents a decline of almost three years compared with boys between 2019 and 2021 when the figure stood at 57.7 years.

“For girls that trend is actually even more alarming. Girls born in Derry between 2022 and 2024 can expect to live 54.2 years of a healthy life and that is down from 58.6 years, 4.4 fewer years of healthy living.

“Those aren’t marginal changes. They are really significant changes and they are stark reductions in the number of years people can expect to live in good health and that really matters.

“It matters how we plan our health service. It matters how we plan to support our older people as well and this all costs money.”

The SDLP MLA said the declines should not be viewed in isolation and pointed out that healthy life expectancy is shaped by wider determinants including income, employment, housing, public services and access to opportunity.

“These outcomes reflect the cumulative effects of social and economic inequality. Regional balance, therefore, is not merely an economic issue, it is a health issue. It is about how people live, how well they live and the fairness of outcomes across our society.

“Where a person is born should not dictate the quality of their health or the length of their healthy life.

“Yet these figures clearly show that geography continues to exert a powerful influence and that is why I am bringing a Regional Balance Bill to this Assembly so that we can put it in legislation to ensure that tackling regional balance becomes a central consideration right across government,” said the local SDLP MLA.

The ONS report showed that in the North, Lisburn and Castlereagh (65.5 years for males, 65.8 years for females) and Mid Ulster (65.4 years for males, 65.9 years for females) had the highest health life expectancy, while Derry City and Strabane (54.9 and 54.2 years, respectively) and Belfast (56.9 and 56.6 years, respectively) had the lowest.

Derry City and Strabane had the largest decreases in the North for both males and females (of 2.8 and 4.4 years, respectively), while the largest increases were in Mid Ulster (of 2.3 years and 1.9 years, respectively).

Mrs. McLaughlin has said her Regional Balance Bill will set binding legal obligations on Executive Departments to measure and address regional imbalance, creating a new framework for transparency and accountability on regional inequality.