The Final topic of People's Health - Britain in the 20th and 21st Centuries.

Lessons and Overview Below!

Overview

By 1900 the majority of Britain still attended Church, and 55% of all children went to Sunday school. However, science was causing more and more people to doubt religion. Science was advancing and the horrors of World War I only fuelled religious doubt. By 2001 only 10% of the British population attended Church. People now turned to science - not prayer - to fix problems.

By 1900 the population was at 37 million. With advances in machinery, more food could be produced, but there was less need for labour. People left the countryside for the towns and cities. Although the average working week was 54 hours there was still leisure time. By 2000 the population was at 58 million with a larger mix of ethnicities due to Commonwealth and other migration. The larger population put much more strain on the welfare state, and later the NHS.

People may have sat in the pub in 1900 but they still got plenty of exercise elsewhere, whereas in 2000 the working hours were only around 39 hours per week (for non-teachers) and most people were entertained through technology. Nowadays our lives involve a lot less exercise. Binge drinking is also still an issue. Alcoholism is a continuous problem.

In the early 1900s jobs were mainly manual labour and mostly done by the men. Married women did not work, but stayed at home to raise children, Trade Unions did make some differences and achieved better rights for workers. In 2000 it had become very different. A larger middle class exists now and most people have jobs which are not manual labour. In general people have a better quality of life.

Science was accelerating throughout the 20^th century. From 1896 there were cars on the roads and in the same year there were films on screens. Wireless telegraph signal could reach from America to England. Science would advance rapidly for the next century. Chemicals, paints, pesticides and so much more. In the 1960s the arrival of the contraceptive pill led to family planning – giving women the opportunity to focus on their career and decide if they wanted a family or not. The world now had antibiotics (penicillin) that ended many once life-threatening infections. Travelling was much easier and much more advanced and ideas could now be published around the world in mere seconds.

By the 1880s many working men could vote and they wanted the national government to make changes. The government had to promise changes to secure votes. Between 1906 and 1911 the Liberal Party made many changes to create a welfare state. In 1945 the Labour Party was voted into power and they created the NHS in 1948 though in 2010 there were many cuts made to the NHS, due to cost.

It is important to realise that there were many changes in the 20^th and 21^st century, but still some continuity. There are also still many problems with the current public health system

Living Conditions

Housing:

In the first half of the twentieth century the government took more and more responsibility for the people’s health. In 1909 Parliament banned back to back housing. Then there were further significant changes in 1919 which ordered councils to become landlords for the poor by building new, rented housing for the working class people in their area.

They began using taxpayers’ money to help fund each local authority’s building programme, set standards for space, water supply, and drainage that all new houses had to meet – this improved living conditions for the poorer members of society.

These council houses were called “homes fit for heroes” as they were designed to help the men returning from the trenches.

In 1921 work started on the Becontree Estate in Dagenham, and by 1932 over 25,000 houses had become homes for those in the East end. The houses had toilets and bathrooms INDOORS.

Despite these developments there were still slums and so parliament, in 1930, knew they had to force private landlords to sell their houses in the slums to the council. The councils could then clear the slums and build new suitable housing.

Streets in the air:

City councils wanted to build as many homes as they possibly could. Developments in gas and electricity meant they could start building high rises. The Second World War saw a destruction of 475,000 houses in the UK. This meant there had to be an enormous building programme for three decades. 4,500 high rises were built by 1980 and those that had lived in the back-to-back housing now moved into the tower blocks, but communities were not as close or welcoming as they had been.

Decline of council housing:

By 1979, 42% of the population lived in council housing of some sort compared with just 1% in 1900. Prime Minster, Margaret Thatcher, thought things had gone too far. She believed people should be less dependent on the state. In 1980 tenants were able to buy their council housing. 1.5 million council houses were sold. This led to a rise in renting which could be seen as a good thing but in reality 50% of private rented housing failed to meet the government’s required standards for healthy homes set out in 2000.

Inactivity:

the country faces a huge problem of inactivity. There are fewer active jobs, more cars and lazier forms of entertainment. A research project shows that in 2013 that three quarters of people who have no qualifications take little or not exercise.

Food:

Big changes in the in the last quarter of the nineteenth century led to changes in the way food was sold. Grocery stores such as Sainsbury’s became popular. They were open every day unlike market stalls. Prices were falling and wages were rising so luxury items like chocolate and sweets became much more affordable. In 1914 Britain spent 60% of their income on food, but by 1937, this had fallen to 37%.

War changes everything. WWII broke out in 1939. It became impossible to import goods from abroad so more effort was put into producing food at home. The government had to introduce food rationing to ensure there was enough to be fairly distributed. People with land would grow vegetables and keep animals. The war ended in 1945 but rationing continued in 1954. The health of Britain improved under rationing as everyone had to abide by a balanced diet.

Food supplies changed after 1950 as more families became wealthy. In 1959 13% of homes had refrigerators. More women were working so more families relied on ready-made meals. Preservatives meant these meals would keep for longer. Microwaves were invented in 1950 and they overtook the sale of regular ovens in 1975. Convenient food was now part of the nation’s life style.

We still face food scares. In 1986 BSE infected cows were found, and in 1996 it became apparent that it could infect humans who ate the infected meat. This has been followed by foot and mouth scares. Also animals are now being given antibiotics to kill infections, but in the long term this is making germs more resistant to antibiotics which will create huge problems in the future.

Air:

Smog was a huge problem in the early 20^th century. There were laws to prevent such thick smog but in reality little was done. In December 1952, London suffered the worst smog it had ever known. It killed around 12,000 Londoners. In 1956 the government passed the Clean Air Act. This required factories to burn special types of ‘smokeless’ fuel, by the 1980s smog was less of a problem…

Factory smoke has become less of an issue but car exhaust fumes has become a greater one. Pollution is still big issue particularly in the cities.

Epidemic - Spanish Flu

The Spanish Flu: the Spanish Flu is the reason that Britain gets very jumpy about ‘Swine flu’ or Avian flu. The Spanish flu, which was first reported in Spain was a type of avian flu that killed over 50 million people worldwide. In Britain it killed 228,000 people.

It occurred in 1918 towards the end of World War I which allowed the flu to spread all around the world as men headed home from the war.

Spanish flu was like other forms of influenza, it caused a chill, high temperatures, headaches and pains then it turned into pneumonia and victims struggled for oxygen. People could be healthy in the morning and then dead by the afternoon.

It is thought that the Spanish flu was an avian flu which came from the far-east that was spread due to Chinese labourers. We still have no cure for the influenza today, vaccines offer some protection but it’s not enough. A new flu virus could attack the world at any time and despite all our scientific advances we are still largely defenceless.

Dr Niven’s work in Manchester in 1919 limited the spread of the Spanish Influenza. 2000 people died but his attempts to publish advice, close schools, show educational films made a difference. More died in Glasgow and London, for example, in comparison.

Epidemic - Aids

Phase 1: 1970s-1983 – Growing Awareness

By 1982, 7 people in Britain had died from AIDS. Friends of one of these set up the Terrance Higgins Trust to raise funds for research and raise awareness of the illness. At this this time very few people were concerned about AIDS.

The media took an interest in 1983 when a number of people had developed AIDS because of blood transfusions. The government urged gay people and drug addicts to stop donating blood. A Newspaper ran a story called ‘Killer Blood’ and soon two documentaries were shown on television about AIDS. They emphasised the condition was associated with gay men. One newspaper called it the ‘Gay Plague’.

Early reporting of AIDS raised concerns but many say that AIDS was not like Cholera or Spanish Flu and it should be avoided if men would refrain from having sex with men and if drug users kicked their habit. Some Church leaders preached it was God’s punishment on gay people and drug addicts.

Phase 2: 1984-85 – Growing Alarm-

People were unsure of how easily AIDS could spread and overreacted. Some fire service staff stopped giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to people. Some churchgoers refused to share the cup from which everyone drank their wine for Holy Communion. Parents withdrew their children from a class when one pupil acquired HIV through a blood transfusion. There was no risk of getting AIDS in any of these situations but at this time that was not made clear. People’s fears then got worse when the Royal College of Nursing in 1985 wrongly predicted they would have 1 million cases of AIDS by 1991. The government made this worse when they told hospitals to detain patients with AIDS even if the patients wished to leave. Doctors and visitors had to wear gowns, masks and gloves which made fears about how AIDS spread worse.

Phase 3: 1986-87

By this time more helpful actions were underway: Charity groups, including some set up by churches, provided clean needles to addicts to reduce cross infection. The government funded free testing for HIV at hospitals and the screening of all blood donations so transfusions would be safe. The government organised an AIDS prevention campaign. It put adverts on TV about HIV and advice about how to avoid contracting AIDS. Leaflets were sent to every home called ‘Don’t die of ignorance’. TV programmes, radio shows and posters helped to end the myths about how AIDS was spread. A major breakthrough happened in 1987 when the Princess Diana (who was the most popular member of the royal family) visited a clinic and made sure that the media took pictures of her shaking hands with an AIDS patient with no gloves on. She showed the nation that these victims should not be feared but shown compassion and respect.

Phase 4: 1988-95 Growing Acceptance –

In the late 80s and early 90s AIDS was becoming more widely understood. In 1991 Eastenders ran a story about a character who was diagnosed as HIV-positive. In the same year Freddie Mercury (a huge rock icon) died from AIDS. In 1992 a tribute concert and a special release of one of his greatest hits raised around £20 million for the cause. This would have been unthinkable in the years before. AIDS was spreading but not at the rate that had been predicted by 1995 25,000 people had been diagnosed HIV-positive, 12000 of those developed AIDS and 8,500 had died.

Phase 5: From 1996 – Growing complacency -

In 1996 came unexpected news that scientists had devised drugs called ‘anti-retrovirals’ that delayed the onset of AIDS in people infected by HIV. It was a very expensive treatment but the government funded it. Great news.

There were, however, unexpected consequences. The government relaxed its campaigns about AIDS and HIV as well as many other sexually transmitted diseases. In 2009 about 100,000 people in Britain are living with HIV of those 40,000 are gay men the rest are heterosexual men and women. About 25% are unaware they are living with HIV and may be spreading the infection without knowing it. Far from helping the epidemic the discovery of an effective treatment has made it worse.