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We are no longer updating our Covid-19 hub regularly. That includes this page. Click here for the latest.
Forum demands publication of Covid-19 data by gender
19/03/20 .
News
The Men’s Health Forum has called on government to monitor the Covid-19 epidemic by gender and age.
The Forum is writing to the CEOs of Public Health England, Public Health Scotland and Public Health Wales and the Chief Medical Officers for the three countries calling on them to collect, analyse and publicly report data around gender and age and to include within their research the question as to why men are more at risk both of catching Covid-19 and of dying from it and what actions this requires.
Following the early results from China, mortality statistics from Italy (via WHO Europe) and Denmark and, based on newspaper reports, the UK suggest that, to date, around 70% of deaths from COVID-19 are male – at a younger average age – despite men being a minority of the older age group most at risk.
The explanation may include biology (men are more susceptible to respiratory diseases) and behaviour (historically, men have smoked more than women and are less likely to seek help or wash hands). Social attitudes including traditional ‘strong and silent’ ideas about masculinity and attitudes to ‘man flu’ may also be stigmatising male help-seeking. Is this the full expanation for such a large disparity? We don't know. There may be other factors around Covid-19 or male compliance with advice or something else entirely.
Men’s Health Forum CEO Martin Tod said:
We don’t have a lot of UK data to go on at present, which is why we’re asking for it to be collected. However, our preliminary analysis of the first 50 or so UK deaths suggests men are disproportionately affected.
It’s clearly vital when collecting data on this dangerous new virus that we understand the differences in how men and women are affected so we can plan appropriately. That’s why we’re calling on government to collect all Covid-19 data by gender and age and make it publicly available.
We already know from work done by GAMH that in the 2003 SARS outbreak in Hong Kong and the MERS infections between 2017 and 2018, more infected men died than infected women. Both SARS and MERS were corona viruses.
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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.
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