Forum stands up for penile services

06/02/19 . News

The Men's Health Forum has advised the NHS against over-centralising its penile prosthetic surgery services.

NHS England is currently consulting on the centralisation of penile prosthetic treatments for men with erectile dysfunction into fewer centres across England. This process could result in as few as four specialist centres leaving large areas of the country with no provision in their region.

The British Association of Urologists backs some consolidation but is calling for more centres - perhaps 10. The concern is not just that this particular procedure will be overcentralised but that specialists in the area will inevitably be overcentralised too. The Men's Health Forum supports this.

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.

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