HEALTH WARNING
We are no longer updating our Covid-19 hub regularly. That includes this page. Follow the link below for the latest.
HEALTH WARNING
We are no longer updating our Covid-19 hub regularly. That includes this page. Click here for the latest.
Covid-19: Black men twice as likely to die as white
07/05/20 .
News
Black people are twice as likely to die from Covid-19 as white people. Even after factors like social deprivation are taken into account.
That’s the simple conclusion of some impressive number-crunching by the ONS.
When comparisons are made on the basis of age alone, black men are 4.2 times more likely to die than their white counterparts (black women are 4.3 times more likely to die than white women). However, socio-economic factors play a major part in health as do, of course, pre-existing conditions and disability. In the UK, as the ONS puts it, the 'existing evidence indicates that most ethnic minority groups tend to be more disadvantaged than their White counterparts'.
Once these factors were taken into consideration, men and women of Black ethnicity were 1.9 times more likely to die of Covid-19 than those of White ethnicity. Men in the Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic group were 1.8 times more likely to die (for women from those groups, the figure was 1.6 times more likely). The changes were less marked for men of Indian or Chinese ethnicity although both groups do have an elevated risk compared to their White counterparts.
The findings can be seen in the ONS chart below. The ONS conclude: 'These results show that the difference between ethnic groups in COVID-19 mortality is partly a result of socio-economic disadvantage and other circumstances, but a remaining part of the difference has not yet been explained.'
The analysis comes ahead of a review into how different factors – including ethnicity, gender and obesity – can impact on Covid-19 outcomes. Professor Kevin Fenton, Public Health Director for London will lead the review which will report by the end of the month.
|
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.
|
