HEALTH WARNING
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HEALTH WARNING
We are no longer updating our Covid-19 hub regularly. That includes this page. Click here for the latest.
When are we going to tell men the truth about Covid?
26/01/21 .
Blog
The ONS report on Covid-19-related deaths by occupation confirms again that the sex- and gender-blind approach taken by the NHS and government towards Covid isn’t consistent with reality.
Once again we see that working-age men are nearly twice as likely to die from Covid as working-age women – with more than 5,000 working-age men dying between March and December.
There are particular jobs – mostly done by men – that have seen shocking death rates – which have not had enough attention, such as cab drivers, bus drivers, security guards, chefs, pub landlords and police officers. Almost all the ambulance staff and hospital porters who died from Covid until December were men. Overall, amongst healthcare workers, men were at two-and-a-half times greater risk.
Even in jobs which are mostly female, the death rates among men are wholly disproportionate. Men are 11% of nurses, but 30% of deaths amongst nurses – and yet we’ve not even seen acknowledgement of this by NHS management, let alone any action taken.
Gender is being ignored
We are also seeing this failure to look at hard facts from the Joint Committee on Vaccination which hasn’t required the government to report vaccination uptake by sex or any other inequality group and has removed any reference to sex and gender from their recent 'advice on priority groups for COVID-19 vaccination'.
Quite literally, the words 'sex', 'gender', 'man' or 'male' do not appear in their overall guidance – even when the papers they notionally claim to reference show these differences – particularly in the area of employment.
It’s time for action:
- When the NHS vaccination programme comes to working age people, high risk men’s jobs must be given fair priority.
- We need to see sex properly reflected in all workplace risk assessments.
- Behaviour and attitudes are also different. The government has to start thinking seriously about how the government communicates to men.
- Finally, all data needs to be reported by sex – especially the vaccination statistics. This isn’t just for the academics: if there’s any shortfall in uptake it must be clear for us all to see.
It’s also essential men know that they’re at higher risk – but if the government are silent about it, how are men expected to know?
Martin Tod
CEO, Men's Health Forum
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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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