Health and the economic crisis

“Had austerity been run like a drug trial, it would have been discontinued, given evidence of its deadly side effects.” So says the political economist David Stuckler about the toll the debt crisis is taking on Europe’s health. As Sophie Arie reports this week (doi:10.1136/bmj.3773), while governments in Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Ireland implement the most drastic austerity measures, suicide rates have doubled, and mental health problems and drug and alcohol problems have increased. “Malaria has reappeared in Greece for the first time since the 1970s after mosquito spraying programmes were cut,” she writes. There is also evidence of a rise in infant mortality since 2008 after a long fall, and …