GHA talks about men’s health

The GHA held its first seminar as part of a ‘Let’s talk about… ‘campaign to get men to take better care of their health.
‘MOTs for men’ was the first of a five lecture series that will be hosted at the King’s Bastion Leisure Centre over the next few months.
The events are open to the public and its main message is to tell men about the services available to them locally.
The Minister for Health, Neil Costa, opened the event hosted by Head of Department at the School of Health Studies Professor Ian Peate.
Professor Ian Banks, president of the European Men’s Health Forum arrived on the Rock to present the first open session.
“The advice that I have received is that men are terrible at wishing to receive or even getting health care advice,” Mr Costa said.
“I also understand from what I have been told which was quite a staggering statistic for me was that the life expectancy for men is 73 in the EU and for women it is 80. There is a seven year difference between men and women, this shows that us men are actually pretty rubbish at taking care of ourselves.”
Mr Costa told the audience young mortality in men between 16 and 54 is around 640,000 in EU and with women it is 300,000.
“We hope to have participation from as many men as possible but of course from women so that as I understand it, women do drag men to visit the Primary Care Centre. Another interesting statistic that I also read was that unmarried men tend to die sooner than married men.”
Professor Banks joked MOT stood for ‘man only tests’ as the event would concrete purely on men’s health.
“There is a difference in life expectancy in every country in the world except for Tonga women live longer than men,” Professor Banks said.
“The most reasonable explanation is that women kill men,” he joked, “but that is not true.”
“Unmarried women live longer than married women so if anything men make women ill.”
On a serious note Professor Banks said men can do something about this.
“Men are brought up in a way not to complain about health and put on a strong masculine persona. It is not good enough just blaming men, we’ve got to look at the way we are educating men.”
Professor Banks also discussed health issues affecting men such as erectile dysfunction and high blood pressure.
The next men’s health seminar called ‘understanding male cancers’ will be held on June 22 at the Kings Bastion Leisure Cinemas at 7pm.