20 January 2006
A plea to the Austrian Presidency of the European Union not to neglect men’s health issues has come from John Bowis, a member of the European Men’s Health Forum central committee and Conservative MEP for London.
In an editorial for the European Men’s Health Forum website, Mr Bowis says that Austria has signalled its priorities for the next six months as women's heart disease, osteoporosis and endometriosis, as well as diabetes.
‘All that is very welcome so long as the important priorities for men's health are not neglected’, he writes.
‘Gender mainstreaming is one of those buzz-words, or buzz-phrases, that is all the rage among European policy makers and most of them have not the faintest idea of what it means. Gender issues in health are often assumed to be women's issues and so the gender agenda is taken over by the women's agenda.’
Mr Bowis, who is also Conservative spokesman on health and consumer affairs in the European Parliament, accepts that men are notoriously bad about seeking medical advice and even worse about adopting a personal policy of health promotion. As a result, men die younger than women, although women have more later years with disability and frailty.
He says that a change in men's attitudes to their health would be good for men and good for governments.
‘But it would also help men to cope when they are at their most vulnerable. One of my political priorities has been to campaign against and defeat stigma. Stigma is nearly always based more on ignorance than malice, but it is always a cruel and unnecessary added burden to the person living with a disease or disorder. We see it in mental illness, we see it in epilepsy, we see it in diabetes, we see it in incontinence. We also see it when men contract diseases that are assumed by society to be women's diseases.
‘A man may cope with testicular or bowel cancer, even if they are not easy to talk about. He will find it much more difficult, if not intolerable, to cope with breast cancer. Men have been led to despair, shame and suicide because of their own emotions over having a "women's disease" and being totally unable to confide in family and friends. To a lesser extent coming to terms with a man having osteoporosis is traumatic. The stigma may be as much self-generated as imposed by others, but society does little to support and sustain a man in such circumstances.’
Mr Bowis says that a greater understanding by governments of, and investment in, good health would cut the cost of years lost both by mortality and by disability in both senses. The benefit to governments would be more active earning years, contributing to the tax coffers and lower demands on benefit systems.
He welcomes the Vienna Declaration on Men's Health, published in October, and concludes: ‘Austria and Europe as a whole have an opportunity and a duty to press for gender, male and female, to have its place in the planning of healthcare and health services for the future.’
Ends
Note to Editors
- The EMHF is an independent, non governmental, non-profit making organisation established to promote male health across Europe.
- At its inaugural conference in October 2005 in Vienna, the European Men’s health Forum issued a Declaration calling on Europe’s politicians to recognise men’s health as a distinct and important issue, to develop a better understanding of men’s attitudes to health, to invest in ‘male sensitive’ approaches to providing healthcare and to initiate work on health for boys and young men in school and community settings. Link to it here.
- For further information please contact: Nigel Duncan, EMHF Press Officer at nduncan@ndcommunications.co.uk
