Friday, December 17, 2004

Equal Treatment: closing the gap (UK)
Page at the Disability Rights Commission web site on "a formal investigation into health inequalities experienced by people with long term mental health problems and people with learning disabilities." As noted at the site, the investigation was launched "because of the overwhelming weight of evidence pointing to disparities in health outcomes amongst people with learning disabilities and people with long term mental health problems. Put simply, a lot of the evidence points to the fact that these groups of disabled people have higher mortality rates (i.e. die earlier) than the overall population - not always for reasons related to their impairment. Much of this evidence is alarming and therefore the DRC decided to use its powers to undertake formal investigations to instigate a comprehensive enquiry into this issue..."