Lack of "Health Economics" key to NI's failings

ianjamesparsley

Oct 4

I have written before on these pages that the solutions to any complex problem are never simple. One of the great difficulties of democracy in our era is the insistence that they are.

I have also written before about an obvious example of this, namely Northern Ireland's Health Service.

Unfortunately, the crisis is such that even the media are well behind on it. They reported two weeks ago, for example, that a particular service had been withdrawn. However, any service with a waiting time measured in years has, in effect, been withdrawn. Nobody can, or should, wait that long for

Such a strategy would need to be wide-ranging, naturally drawing on experiences from elsewhere. One of the most notable strategies to tackle drug addiction was the sweeping reform in Portugal from 2001, which included limited decriminalisation and so-called 'dissuasion commissions'. It may be noted that other proposals, such as 'substance misuse courts', have demonstrated rather less benefit. There is no question, however, that a core and beneficial component of the Portuguese response, and also the more successful responses in the United States and Canada, has been the introduction of so-called 'safe injecting' or (more commonly on this side of the Atlantic) 'drug consumption' rooms.

So, although we cannot turn a blind eye to others issues which impact on drug abuse in Northern Ireland, we can be relatively sure based on the evidence from elsewhere that 'drug consumption rooms' will be part of the mix. In parts of Europe and North America they have already proven effective in reducing the rates of addiction, the scale of harm caused, and then in enabling people to get on the path to rehabilitation.

Fundamentally, as with any such interventions, we need to be moving swiftly towards tacking the root causes of drug addiction and abuse. We also need to be doing more to tackle the problem at source, by stopping producers and traffickers. However, for those who are already dependent, we also need to be taking action. We need to be using devolved government to deliver new, more effective, evidence-based policies and plans which will tackle addiction and help people at most risk.