Trust invests £2.3m to boost healthcare

11:09am Tuesday 10th June 2008

A HEALTH trust aims to improve life expectancy by injecting £2.3m over the next three years.

Greenwich Teaching Primary Care Trust says life expectancy in the area is not improving as quickly as in the rest of the country.

The average life expectancy of men in the borough is 75, compared with 77.3 for the whole of England.

For women the borough average is 80.7 years, compared with 81.6 across England.

Joint director of public health Dr Hilary Guite said: "We want to increase access tenfold to services which will help people improve their mental wellbeing, increase their exercise, improve their diet and stop smoking.

"We will be making services more attractive to men and working with ethnic groups who have particularly high levels of risk factors for disease such as diabetes in Asian populations and high blood pressure in African populations."

According to a recent health review, the top three causes of death in the borough are mental health, cancer and heart attacks and strokes.

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