Virginia boasts of many fine medical centers including the Medical College of Virginia, the University of Virginia and others. Doctors’ offices in metro areas are chock-a-block with diagnostic and surgical devices that can do in seconds what used to take hours.
So, it comes as a bit of a shocker to realize that in some parts of Virginia, life expectancies for women are actually declining. That is the case in mountain areas such as Radford and Pulaski. In 1983, females living in those areas could expect to live 84 years. By 1999, according to The Washington Post, it had dropped by 5.8 years to 78.
The trend in those spots of the Old Dominion was repeated in other sections of the U.S., notably in the Deep South around the Mississippi Delta, in some parts of the Upper Plains and in the Southern Appalachia coalfields not far from Pulaski and Radford. All in all life expectations for females dropped in 1,000 counties in the U.S. This is from a recent report put together by researchers from the University of Washington, The University of California, San Francisco and Harvard.
A big reason for the declining female mortality rates: diet, sedentary lifestyles and a lack of decent medical insurance. Besides super-sized fries, soft drinks and Double Whoppers, the mountain ladies also like cigarettes and beer. This adds up to weight gain, which in turn leads to what one local general surgeon calls the “Five Fs” – “female, forty, fertile, fair and fat.” The oversized ladies are prone to diabetes, vascular and heart issues and cancer.
Is it time to get serious about mandated health insurance with some kind of government intervention? I think so. Do you?