MEN'S RELUCTANCE to go to doctors or engage with health professionals is endangering their lives and their life expectancy, Dr Felipe Contepomi has warned.
Dr Contepomi, the Leinster and Argentina fly-half who qualified as a medical doctor last year and is working part-time in Beaumont Hospital, cited the example of male diabetes patients who present themselves at hospitals with serious symptoms.
"Diabetes is an illness that is totally compatible with a normal life if you treat it properly and if you get it in time. But if you let it go to a late stage when you start having complications, it is very difficult to control it and that reduces your life expectancy and can lead to death," he said at the launch yesterday of the annual Pfizer Health Index.
The index, now in its fourth year, found that men were markedly less likely to go to the doctor than women, but were just as likely to get serious illness.
Recent figures compiled by the CSO found that men were on average living almost five years less than women, although the gap is closing.
Dr Contepomi said he wanted to promote better health among men because he had seen first-hand the effects of those who leave it too late to get help.
"Most of the people who come really late have treatment that becomes so difficult and you wonder what were they thinking and why did they not come earlier to see a doctor. These people are usually men.
"Men see going to the doctor as a weakness. You are a weak man and you are fragile, but it is the opposite.
"I think it is much better to have the courage to say that you went to the doctor than actually leaving it to Mother Nature to cure you and find out that it is too late," he said.
The unwillingness of men to take action when they are ill will be addressed in a National Men's Policy and Action Plan which has been seven years in the planning and is due to be published by the Department of Health and Children later this year.
Research carried out by the Centre for Men's Health Research and Training at the Institute of Technology in Carlow has found that more than half of all Irish men (51.5 per cent) are "reluctant attenders" in terms of going to a doctor and most do so only at the behest of their wives or partners.
Nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) cited the belief that their problem was not serious enough to merit a doctor's intervention as the principal reason for not going.
Dr Richardson, director of the centre, said the action plan, which was first mooted in 2001, had been the subject of a public consultation since 2005 involving men, men's groups and all agencies and bodies working in the field of men's health.
He said the action plan would address how men's health could be better promoted within the home, schools, workplaces and in society.
"I do think that not presenting to health professionals is a huge factor in life expectancy differences. I think by addressing that and looking for opportunities in which we can get men to get health checks, it will certainly address the disparity in life expectancies between men and women though it is a complex issue," he added.
