Written Answers. - Illness Prevention Information.
Thomas P. Broughan
Question:
104
Mr. Broughan
asked the
Minister for Health
his views on whether the spending of less than £1 million on illness prevention information out of a total budget of almost £2 billion in 1992 is ill-conceived in view of the importance of disease prevention; and if he will make a statement on the programme of measures he intends to take in preventive medicine during 1993.
I am not sure where the figure of less than £1 million which the Deputy says was spent on illness prevention information in 1992 emanates from.
In 1992 a total of £1,080,000 was provided in subhead H for "Dissemination of Information on Health and Health Services." Most of these funds were used by my Department's Health Promotion Unit in implementing its various health promotion, including illness prevention, activities. However, this did not represent the unit's total spending on this area in 1992. The Health Promotion Unit spent a further £500,000 approximately on its activities, most of which was made available from the national lottery. This meant that the unit's total budget for 1992 was almost £1.6 million, and this excludes the staff and overhead costs.
However, it should be stressed that other significant investment in health promotion, including illness prevention, takes place nationally under a range of public health services by community physicians, nurses and paramedical services and social support services. Also excluded from the Health Promotion Unit's budget is the administration costs by health boards — health education staff in particular — of health promotion initiatives at regional level.
In fact a total of over £32 million was provided in 1992 for community protection programmes. These programmes cover: prevention of infectious disease, child health examinations, food hygiene and standards, drugs advisory service, health promotion and other preventive services. A further £303 million was provided for community health service programmes, including the general medical services, drug subsidy schemes and home nursing services and the role of those services in illness prevention cannot be ignored.
Referring specifically to the Health Promotion Unit's programme of measures for 1993, a range of important disease prevention initiatives are being undertaken by the unit this year. As the Deputy is aware, last February I launched a new multi-media anti-smoking campaign the first phase of which was a significant success and the second phase will commence at the end of this month. In March of this year the Health Promotion Unit organised the first ever National Healthy Eating Week which enlisted the support of all the generic food agencies, retail outlets, voluntary organisations and health boards in raising the public's awareness of the value of a healthy diet. Also at the end of this month I will be launching a major multi-media AIDS prevention campaign. A new alcohol education campaign is planned for later in the year. In addition, the Health Promotion Unit is continuing its support for a number of projects to prevent substance abuse. Included among these are a parenting education project in Cork, a substance abuse prevention project being piloted in conjunction with the Department of Education and the Mater Dei Institute and a peer-led anti-smoking programme being piloted by the unit in conjunction with the Department of Education. These are just the main projects among the many disease prevention initiatives which are being supported by the Health Promotion Unit in 1993 and as I have already emphasised, they must be viewed in the wider context of the far greater investment in health promotion by the public health services.
