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Vaccine experts encourage men to get the jab
26/02/21 .
News
After much campaigning, lobbying and hard work from the Forum, some gender-sensitive Covid advice has finally emerged from the central government machine.
In its latest announcement, the Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation continues to prioritise the vaccine by age - a strategy the Forum agrees with - but, in addition, the JCVI 'strongly advises that males promptly take up the offer of vaccination'. In a letter earlier this month, the Forum had asked the JCVI to properly highlight the greater risk faced by men.
The JCVI are also calling on those in the NHS deploying the vaccine to work with local health systems and organisations like the Forum to reach out to men clearly to encourage vaccine take-up.
The age-led vaccination roll-out means that after nine phase-one priority groups, the vaccine will next be offered to all those aged 40 to 49 years then all those aged 30 to 39 years and then all those aged 18 to 29 years. As well as men, the JCVI also strongly advise people from a BAME community, those with a BMI over 30 and residents of poorer neighbourhoods to accept the vaccine as soon as it is offered.
Ensure men get the message
Forum CEO Martin Tod said:
We are very pleased that the JCVI has taken this opportunity to explicitly target men and encourage them to get vaccinated. There are many increased risks factors for Covid and people need to be aware of all of them - including being male. We hope the government will now do all it can in its advertising and public communications to ensure than men get the message.
Our letter of 17 February 2021 expressed 'our disappointment' with the JCVI’s guidance on Covid-19 vaccination released in December 2020. We pointed out that by seriously underplaying men’s greater risk of serious morbidity, the guidance risked 'significant issues once the vaccination programme extends to the working age population'.
In its statement on phase 2 of the vaccination programme, the JCVI says 'deployment teams should utilise the experience and understanding of local health systems and demographics, combined with clear communications and outreach activity to promote vaccination in these groups' (men, people from a BAME background, people with a BMI over 30 and those living in poorer neighbourhoods).
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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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