Dr. Laura Noonan:

The important fact to remember here is that the poor and vulnerable in society are more likely to suffer from multiple morbidities. I am not sure whether we outlined that multiple morbidities means patients who have more than two complex medical conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes and asthma. These conditions interact. When we look at the numbers, for example, those who have hypertension or high blood pressure, we say that in 2014 approximately 800,000 patients had hypertension. When we project forward to 2020, we expect that number to have increased to almost 1.2 million patients. These patients then are at risk of other illnesses and diseases. It is important that we target them at the primary care level with the GP at the core - the GP is the centre of primary care - to try to reduce the burden of this disease because although patients are living longer, the burden of chronic disease on these patients means that their quality of life is dramatically reduced.