HEALTH WARNING
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Men & Covid-19: new lessons learned & the challenge of inequality
Since the Forum's last webinar on Men & Covid-19 in April, we've learned a great deal about the impact of the virus on men, including the disproportionately hard impact on some groups of men - particularly BAME men and men in areas of deprivation. When we publicised our last webinar, we said that men were 50% more likely to die from COVID-19 than women. We now know that estimate was too low. What else have we learned? And what does this mean for men's health in the future?
For Men's Health Week 2020, the theme was 'Take Action on Covid-19'. Professor Gurch Randhawa, Professor Alan White and Peter Baker discuss the lessons of spring 2020 - the short, medium and long-term implications for men's health - how the system and policy needs to change - and how we work to achieve it.
Two issues that came up in questions at the webinar were encouraging men to get tested and male suicide. These links might help:
- Samaritans: 'Talking can be life-saving'
- New 'Should I get a Covid-19 test' poster
- New 'Should I get a Covid-19 test' social media share
The Men’s Health Forum need your support It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking. In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to. It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for. We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing. Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can. |