GayHealthCenterProject| Health

Facts about men’s health in Ireland

A male child born in the Republic of Ireland will have a six year difference in life expectancy than his female counterpart.
In Northern Ireland, for every one woman dying from cervical cancer, six men will die from prostate cancer. Prostate cancer - as a percentage of all cancers diagnosed in Northern - has risen from 9.7% in 1993 to 11.4% in 1998.
The South of Ireland now has the highest rate of referral for male drug abuse in the EU.
One in eight of all admissions to hospital from casualty departments are alcohol related. Most of these are men. Eleven times as many men in Northern Ireland will take their own lives as women - compared to an average ratio of 4:1 in the rest of the UK. This is a particular concern for gay men, young men and men in rural communities.

Suicide
Unfortunately growing up amidst institutionalised homophobia and discrimination against anyone who is not heterosexual has taken its toll (and still does) on gay and bisexual men. As gay and bisexual men we are brought up to feel that society doesn't value us. Through the education system, coupled with Roman Catholicism, growing up can be a terrible ordeal. For gay and bisexual men the cost of such an upbringing in such a homophobic climate is a very damaged self-esteem. The Combat Poverty Report illustrates that gay/bisexual men are 7 times more likely to take their own life than their heterosexual counterparts. Suicide is now the single greatest cause of young male death in many parts of Ireland. How many of these are related to unhappiness with sexuality is an ongoing question?

Bottled Up
For many men, the solution comes out of the neck of a bottle. One in eight of all admissions to hospital from casualty departments are alcohol related. Most of these are men. At the same time, addiction to injected drugs is doubling every ten years, but almost only amongst men. Infections from injected drug abuse follows the same pattern with men suffering increasingly from hepatitis and HIV.

Health risks

If you compare all the major killers, such as Heart Disease and Lung Cancer, men easily come out best - from the undertaker’s point of view.

Heart Disease is the number one killer for men. One in three of us will die from either a myocardial infarction (heart attack) or a stroke. Worse still, one in six will die from heart disease.
Lung Cancer is the biggest cancer killer amongst men, a disease directly related to smoking.
Cancer of the prostate will see off over 9,500 men each year, four times as many men than cervical cancer will kill women.
Of the 200 deaths from testicular cancer from the 1200 cases reported each year, almost none need ever have died.
Even once relatively obscure conditions, such as melanoma, kill more men than women despite their being more cases of the cancer in women.

Facts and statistics taken from the Men’s Health Forum of Ireland
Aware of the need for information for men on all aspects of health this section of the website contains introductions/facts on the following areas:

Cancer

Testicular Cancer

Male Breast Cancer

Prostate Cancer