THE link between poor health and living in a deprived area is to be debated by a new scrutiny committee after a report said the trend was getting worse.

Buckinghamshire's newest health watchdog organisation, the health scrutiny committee of Buckinghamshire County Council, will debate the link highlighted by the county's former director of public health, Dr Robert Sherriff, in his last annual report.

Some of the most deprived areas of the county are in High Wycombe and Dr Sherriff said poverty and poorer health in the county were inextricably linked.

Dr Sherriff, now director of public health for the Thames Valley Health Authority, is being asked to the next meeting.

The chairman of the health scrutiny committee is county councillor Mike Appleyard (Con, Wooburn).

Cllr Appleyard, who is also chairman of South Buckinghamshire Community Health Council (CHC), told the Free Press that members would be talking to people living in disadvantaged areas and to anyone involved in delivering health care.

He said committee members, who are from county and district councils but answerable to the NHS not the county council, wanted to know what the causes were and what was being done about them.

Cllr Appleyard explained that more people in deprived areas died of cancer and heart disease but added: "We don't know why this is happening. It is easy to say it's just deprived areas, but we need to know why. This is about trying to find out. And if no-one knows why, we need to ask them to find out.

"This is not before time."

The last annual report found that the health of the well-off was improving at a faster rate than that of the poor, and people in deprived areas had poorer access to treatment than richer people what is known as the inverse care law.

Babies are smaller at birth in the poorest wards and more likely to die in their first year, and low birth weight is linked to an increased chance of heart disease or diabetes.

Unskilled men are more likely to die early and this trend is getting worse. Lung cancer deaths increase up the poverty ladder. People from Pakistani, Bangladeshi and African Caribbean backgrounds are more likely to have poor health, as are prisoners and homeless people.

Children from poorer homes are more likely to have chronic illnesses. Poor mental health and suicide is linked with deprivation and to some ethnic minority groups.

Cllr Appleyard said this was not just about ethnicity. It included older people, people who had mental health problems and people who did not have jobs. "We want to look at the whole thing," he added.

He said that this did not just involve the Primary Care Trusts but education, the youth services, housing and social services and he wants action, not just words and targets.

Ailsa Harrison, chief officer of South Bucks Community Health Council, is joining Wycombe Primary Care Trust as its Patients Liaison Officer (Pal), tackling her employers (GPs) about the problems of patients who come to her.

She starts work in September, which leaves the chairman Cllr Appleyard, with a big gap to fill and no-one to do the job until April when the CHC goes out of existence. After that the CHC job will be done by the new scrutiny committee, patients' forums which have yet to be set up, and the Pals, which all hospitals and trusts now must have. All this was announced two years ago by the government in its NHS plan.

South Bucks CHC's former complaints officer, Lesley Mallinder, is now a Pal at the other local primary care trust, Chiltern and South Bucks.