Prevention must be health focus in Northern Ontario
CMAJ 2000;162:1722
Residents of Northern Ontario tend to be more overweight, consume more alcohol and get in more accidents than their counterparts in the south, a comprehensive health-status report prepared by a partnership of 6 provincial health units states. Northern Ontario's combination of low life expectancy and high mortality rates, combined with an increased incidence of risk factors such as smoking and alcohol use, requires a major emphasis on preventing chronic disease, the authors said.
"This congruency speaks to the need to target preventive programs to specific conditions such as smoking, obesity, lack of physical activity, alcohol use and activities at high risk for injury," concluded the 210-page Report of the Health Status of the Residents of Ontario. "Interventions aimed at reducing the rate of risk factors [such as smoking] will reduce the rates of many diseases, such as heart disease, lung cancer, chronic lung disease and many other forms of cancer."
The report found that the age-standardized mortality rate for Northern Ontario females is 607.5 per 100 000, 27% higher than the rate of 479.8 found in Toronto. The rate for Northern Ontario males (971.9 per 100 000) was 25% higher than for their Toronto counterparts. Life expectancy for females is 79.8 years in the North, compared with 81.8 for Toronto females. A Northern male can expect to live 73.5 years, compared with 75.7 for his counterpart in Toronto.
The study also found that Ontarians are generally as healthy as other Canadians, with similar life expectancy and mortality rates. The province's highest rates of communicable diseases are in Toronto, which reported more than half of Ontario's cases of AIDS, tuberculosis and gonorrhea.
Meanwhile, lung cancer threatens to overtake breast cancer as a cause of death among Ontario women, pointing to a need for smoking prevention programs aimed at young women. — David Helwig, London, Ont.
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