HEALTH officials believe life expectancy in the North’s most deprived areas will decrease further in as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

That revelation came as the 2021 Health Inequalities Report, published last month, was brought in front of the Stormont Health Committee this week.

The Department of Health has warned that the health of people living in areas of high social deprivation are likely to be worst-affected by the pandemic with levels of alcohol and drug dependency and hospital waiting lists all increasing as a result.

The report found that male life expectancy in the North’s most deprived areas, including wards in North and West Belfast was 71.3 years — 4.7 years than the average of 76.1 years.

Female life expectancy in the North’s most deprived areas was 77 years, four years less than the average (81 years).

“I think there is no doubt it (COVID-19 pandemic) will have an impact on health outcomes and health inequalities going forward and we need to look at that," said Gary Maxwell from the Department of Health.

“England saw a fall in life expectancy in 2020, a projected fall of about 1.3 years for men and about 0.9 years for women, but higher in areas of deprivation, and that is the first actual fall. While we don’t have those figures for here yet, I would expect we would see similar figures come through and it’s really important we build recovery for public health and resilience into our services going forward.”  

North Belfast Sinn Fein MLA and member of the Health Committee, Carál Ní Chuilín has called for an urgent plan from the Department of Health.

Speaking to the North Belfast News, she said: “It is staggering to once again hear of such stark health inequalities particularly for people in North and West Belfast and Derry and an action plan is urgently required to reverse the worsening trend. Headlines from this report which include lower life expectancy for men of seven years and for women of nearly five years, which are shocking in themselves, fail to show the human tragedy behind the statistics of a poorer quality of life, higher levels of dependency and even higher levels of tooth decay for children."

The Sinn Féin representative said the most marginalised communities were being failed by the health system. 

“Unfortunately people in deprived communities are being failed by the health system and the COVID-19 pandemic has brought these same health inequalities into a much sharper focus," she added.