13th Sep 2007
21st Century death
It has been a sad week on O’Conall Street with the death of my father in law, Joe Murphy. He fought COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) for two and a half years but alas lost his battle on Tuesday morning. He was a great guy who lived life as a boxer, a merchant sailor and a professional Gardener with gusto. An extraordinay, ordniary man like so many of his generation in rural Ireland.
COPD is a big killer. Each year it claims 30,000 people in the UK, 800 of them here in Northern Ireland and a further 2,000 in the Republic. The primary cause of this debilitating disease is smoking. One would hope that with the the significant legislative control on tobacco smoking and advertising now in place in Britain and Ireland, its incidence will decrease over the coming years. Indeed there are early signs of improvement in the Eastern Board area in Northern Ireland where the rates have began to decrease in the past decade. Too late for big Joe and the many others of his generation who will perish but a salient lesson to us all that smoking really does kill.
Sorry to hear about that. I only wish that smokers shared my hatred of the weed, but I suppose that would be a contradiction in terms- it’s just such a needless risk to take with no payback.