One man in five dies before the age of 65.
TOGETHER we can change that.

Monkeypox: another disease that's not gender-neutral

20/09/22 . Blog

Guest blogger Peter Baker explains why this latest public health emergency needs a gender-sensitive response across the globe.

Monkeypox has been declared a ‘public health emergency of international concern’ by the World Health Organisation. This means that monkeypox is now considered to be a global health emergency, WHO’s highest level of alert. We need to act now.

Most cases of monkeypox are male: 60% of current cases in Africa according to Reuters. In Africa, sexual contact between men is not a significant cause of transmission but in the more recently-affected countries, the overwhelming majority of infections have been in men, almost all in men who have sex with men (MSM). 99% of cases are male across 36 European countries and 97% of these cases are in MSM, according to WHO Europe and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

Sex-disaggregated data

One of the key lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic is that infectious disease outbreaks are not gender-neutral. Women, men and gender minorities are affected differently meaning gender must be taken into account in the research, policy and practice responses.

At Global Action on Men’s Health, we are calling for actions at all levels that take gender into account. These must include the publication of sex-disaggregated data on incidence and mortality and research to understand better the causes of men’s higher risk of monkeypox and how it can be addressed effectively.

Vaccines and campaigns

Vaccines to prevent infection should be available to at-risk populations as soon as possible and services for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of monkeypox made fully accessible.

Male-targeted public health campaigns are required to educate at-risk populations about monkeypox, including how to prevent it, the symptoms, the most effective treatments and how to avoid infecting others.

Men bear an excess burden of this very nasty and sometimes fatal disease and it’s vital that we understand more about why men are more susceptible and take effective male-targeted action to prevent and treat the condition.

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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Charity registered in England and Wales (no. 1087375). Company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (no. 4142349).