At about 74-75 years, a man's expectancy in Portugal is a good six years less than a woman's and a year lower than the EU's male average. Paulo Ferrinho of the Portuguese Department of Health - and the new Portuguese Men’s Health Forum - reports on the steps taken on men's health during his country's recent EU presidency.
Men’s health is coming onto the attention of policy makers and academics in Portugal.
When I become head of epidemiology at the Department of Health in Portugal, in 1998, my boss, Professor Amélia Leitão, a towering personality in the development of the Portuguese health information system and of our system of health statistics, confided in me her preoccupation with the excess premature mortality in men, reflected in our official statistics, and the lack of adequate response from policy makers and service providers.
It was therefore a great pleasure, ten years later, in 2007, as president of the Portuguese Epidemiology Association to invite her to be the President of our 5th National Congress of Epidemiology on An epidemiological perspective of men’s health, an event sponsored by the Portuguese Presidency of the European Union.
Before the congress, as an advisor to the High Commissioner for Health of Portugal, I was able to include men’s health in the round table discussions of the European Health Strategy in early July 2007, with the participation of Ian Banks and Erick Savoye from the EMHF.
During the two days of the Congress there were 195 participants from 14 countries. There were a total of 56 presentations. Seventeen of these presentations were on men’s health. Of these, six had an international perspective including one by Professor Luciano Vittozi from the Italian team coordinating the most recent report on the Health Status of the European Union.
The Portuguese studies presented showed there is important and solid work on men’s health going on in the country covering issues as diverse as sexual dysfunction, prostate disease, access to specialized care, use of health services, treatment of male partners of teenagers with sexually transmitted infections, cardiovascular diseases, migrant children in Portugal, mortality and morbidity and knowledge of health issues.
During these two days the participants adopted a declaration on the need to establish a Portuguese Men’s Health Forum. It was read and signed by all present as well as the Director General of the Department of Health, Dr. Francisco George. Along with the High Commissioner for Health, Professor Maria do Céu Machado, he also signed under the observant eyes of Ian Banks, Alan White and Eric Savoye, the Vienna Declaration on Men’ Health, committing Portuguese health policies to its principles.
After the initial pleasure of a job well done and a successful Congress, I was left with a feeling of so little achieved and so much to do, that we do not have resources and we are so few and may be we are wasting our time. Then, recently, I was confronted with two pieces of work that cheered me.
I was invited to participate in the final meeting of the task force writing the report on the European Union health status. The meeting will take place in Rome during the month of September 2008. Men’s health features significantly in the report.
The second piece of good news came from the Department of Health in the form of their most recent publication entitled Health, Sex and Gender: Facts, Representations and Challenges. The book combines epidemiological analysis of mortality and morbidity data with interviews and focus group studies of health workers and with a structured content analysis of the current national health strategy for 2004-2010 (developed during 2003 and 2004 under my chairmanship).
This little book identifies men’s health as a priority on par with women’s health. It identifies the key issues to be addressed by the next national health plan. It confirms that front-line clinical workers are not sensitized to gender issues and men’s health issues. It shows that the existing health strategy is very timid and inconsistent in the way it approaches gender and sex-related issues and indicates ways to correct his in a future strategy.
Yes, in Portugal men’s health has come to stay on the policy makers’ agenda.
