At the turn of the 21st century, social health inequalities remain to be the key public health problems in advanced European countries. There is strong variation in life expectancy between and within the countries, which has accumulated over the past 3 or 4 decades’ (Fox, 1989; Drever & Whitehead, 1997; Kunst, 1997; Marmot & Wilkinson, 1999; Elstad, 2000; Mackenbach & Bakker, 2002). NHS targeted health inequalities with infant mortality and life expectancy at the core to reduce them by 10 % by the end of 2010. These two health inequalities were announced in February 2001, with the other complementary targets, the areas of smoking and teenage pregnancy. These targets were set to reduce the broad spectrum of inequalities covering the general strategy to address all of the major health inequalities including gender, race, age, etc.’ (DH, 2001).
The secretary of state, nationally announced a comprehensive strategy to reduce health inequalities, challenging the NHS as a key player to live up to its founding and enduring values of universality and fairness to shut the unjustified gaps between individuals with any background, fair NHS services with high quality and good outcomes to everyone’ (Darzi L., 2007).
The independent scientific review of the national health inequalities was published in 1998. This report suggested policy developments to tackle health inequalities. This report showed the increasing gap between the different social groups. This resulted in the consideration of these increasing gaps needed action ‘upstream’ as well as ‘downstream’ (Acheson Inquiry, 1998).
As the NHS and Department of Health continuously poured efforts to reduce the health inequalities. The overall performance can be defined as ‘much achieved more to do’ (DH, 2009).
This review will analyze the role of NHS in tackling health inequalities, as targets were set to reduce infant mortality and to increase the life expectancy in men and women across UK, faster than elsewhere in world.