Editorial: Men's health must come out of the yeah-nah basket

Each year, more than 3000 New Zealand men are called to an appointment to be told they have prostate cancer. Photo / 123rf, File

EDITORIAL

Around one in eight New Zealand males develop prostate cancer within their lifetime.

Each year, more than 3000 New Zealand men are called to an appointment to be told they have it – about 80 per cent of diagnoses are among those aged over 60. Around 600 die.

It is not the deadliest cancer for men, thanks to progress in treatment, but the incidence continues to increase.

Unlike with other cancers – such as lung cancer and smoking - there does not appear to be clear and specific measures men could take to prevent prostate cancer. What is clear, however, is that men have a much better chance of successful treatment if they're diagnosed early.

One of the major hurdles to this is many men do not know they are related to someone who has been diagnosed with prostate cancer - yet having a first-degree relative with prostate cancer means you are twice as likely to be at risk.

So much more could be done to improve men's lives and outlooks then, if only we were talking about.

Ditto, as we all know, for mental health. In 2020, there were 444 suspected male deaths by suicide, compared with 147 among women.

Heart disease is the elephant in the room. One in three New Zealanders will die of heart attack or stroke. Males born today will be 20 per cent more likely to be killed by heart disease than women.

And as we know, the situation is even worse among our tangata whenua and Pacific populations.

"Māori and Pasific men in particular lead shorter, sicker lives than their Pakeha cousins," says Adrian Te Patu of the World Federation of Public Health Associations.

It's not just a case of poor them, these statistics make all of us poorer. Dead fathers and grandfathers are little use beyond anecdotes of what they might have achieved had they survived longer.

A 2014 report by public health professor Nick Wilson at Otago University noted: "More pragmatically, humans generally favour companionship – and so reducing the total number of 'widow-years' (years lived as a widow or as a single post-partnership woman) is probably desirable at a societal level. This could be helped by differentially raising male life expectancy."

We are poorer too for the added burden they present on our healthcare regimes.

The cost of surgery relating to prostate cancer ranges between $28,000 and $30,000. A 2011 Health Ministry report estimated the total cost of treatment at $52,000 per case, per year.

In New Zealand, women live three to four years longer than men, and men generally experience a higher incidence of and mortality from major diseases.

Research investigating men's health remains scant with a New Zealand Medical Journal report five years ago identifying a yawning gap. A search was made of Health Research Council funding since 2010 for successful applications to sex-specific funding.

The search revealed that for every $1 spent exclusively on women's health research, men's health research received $0.06.

Our men are also worth saving, surely?