Public health statistics could cease to be published amid wave of budget cuts
A complete halt to the publication of politically sensitive official statistics on smoking, drinking, teenage pregnancies and infant mortality
being considered for a programme of cuts being drawn up by the Office of National Statistics, documents show...
Details of potential cuts to 23 separate sets of official statistics are outlined in a "restricted" annex to a letter from Glen Watson, the ONS's director-general, sent to other government departments during the recent Treasury spending round, which have been seen by the Guardian...
The letter has sparked alarm amongst health campaigners and the research community who point to the fact that several of the statistical series under threat of the axe, such as teenage conceptions, involve issues where Britain fares poorly in the international comparisons...
The annex reveals that the ONS proposed to "stop all statistics on smoking and drinking" and notes that the collection had "already been reduced after the Health and Social Care Information Centre withdrew funding"already been reduced. Other datasets under threat are the ONS's contribution to the cancer survival statistics, ending the publication of analysis of healthy life expectancy figures, and a reducing the coding and analysis of cause of death data to the legally required minimum
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jul/10/public-health-statistics-publish-cuts-cameron
(If your government's cuts are causing harm... cut the funding for discovering and reporting the harm. You know it makes sense!)
