Work safe Victoria conducted a survey in conjunction with their Work Health program to get a snapshot of the health of the Victorian workforce. Over 100,000 people were surveyed over a 9 month period from July 2009 to March 2010.

While it was fantastic to get an accurate breakdown of the current health situation of our workforce, it was very disturbing to see the results.

In assessing the risk categories of Type II Diabetes and cardiovascular disease, the proportion of those at high risk constituted 39% of those surveyed.

Add to that another 14% that had an increased risk of type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
The interesting part of the survey was the self-diagnosis section where people were to make a self-assessment of their current state of health.

Twenty percent of men and 14% of women who were of the opinion that the health was very good but after taking into consideration of their blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and waist measurement they where in fact in the “high risk” group for developing type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Another measurement was a biomedical and lifestyle assessment of the workers which included a graph showing number of risk factors that each work worker was susceptible to. The biomedical risk factors included high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar levels and waist measurements.

The lifestyle risk factors took into consideration all the stuff that people regard as a means of relaxing and chilling out, this included excessive alcohol consumption, smoking, a poor diet, i.e. inadequate consumption of fruit and vegetables, and lastly low levels of physical activity.

The information was represented in a graph that formed the traditional bell shape starting with the percentage of people having 2 risks factors being 17.2%/28.8% for men and women respectively, having three risk factors being 28.9%/30.6% for men and women respectively, and disturbingly 4 risk factors being 25.8%/19.2% for men and women respectively.

Lastly those that had five risk factors where 15.4%/7.9% for men and women respectively.

The survey paints a picture of not only the state of health of our workforce but can be extrapolated to the greater community.

With over 190,000 Victorians with Type II diabetes and a staggering 15,000 additional people diagnosed every year, somewhat does this mean in the long term?

With the projections based on the current levels, it is anticipated by 2025 that 83%/75% of men and women respectively will be either overweight or obese with the corresponding increased risk of contracting type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Is a current government strategies really tackling this epidemic and are the current policies in dealing with this problem sufficient.

In simple terms, the Victorian government spent a staggering 14.4 billion in obesity related expenditure, surely devoting greater funding towards health programs would reduce health care costs in the future and therefore save the government $$$ in the long term?

While the virtues of a high speed internet can be argued at $43 Billion, or other capital works projects such as the desalination plant, surely funding can be allocated to improve the health of our nation?

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 18th, 2010 at 9:27 am by Andrew Talati and is filed under Health Risks.

Tags: Government Policy, obesity

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