Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
The poorer the neighborhood, the greater the chance of residents developing chronic diseases and ending up with long-term illnesses. While 0.7% of residents died in 2022 in 5% of Belgium's wealthiest neighborhoods, the rate reached 1.4% in 5% of the poorest neighborhoods. According to what the Dutch-language newspaper De Tijd reported on Friday, and other media outlets quoted the Belgian News Agency, which added: "The newspaper was able to review a study conducted by the CM Health Fund, which compared data on 4.6 million Belgians with an average income of nearly 20,000 euros, maintained by the statistical office Statbel. The results showed several reasons for the high mortality rates, such as damp or poorly insulated homes along busy roads, cheap and poor-quality food, and limited access to affordable healthcare.
Diabetes is twice as common in the poorest 5% of neighborhoods: 9.7% of residents of poor neighborhoods were diagnosed in 2022. In Belgium's richest neighborhoods, this figure reached 5%. Residents of poor neighborhoods (6.2%) suffer from respiratory diseases more than residents of rich neighborhoods (4.7%). In the poorest neighborhoods, more than 16% of residents were sick for more than a year in 2022. In 2022, they were officially receiving disability benefits. In wealthy neighborhoods, this percentage was less than 6 percent.
In 2022, people from the poorest neighborhoods in our country were hospitalized more often (up 25 percent) and visited the hospital emergency room more often (up 55 percent). By contrast, dental visits and breast cancer screenings are much less common in poor neighborhoods.