Alfred Dawes | Tale of two cancers

What month is this? November? End of the hurricane season? Thanksgiving/Black Friday season? How about Men’s Health Month? Did you know that? When was prostate cancer awareness month? How about breast cancer awareness month? You knew that was October, right? It couldn’t have missed you. There were so many pink ribbons around that you would have had to be living under a rock in order to miss the awareness campaigns.

Do you know what you missed though? That all cancers are equal, but some are more equal than others. The attention paid to breast cancer far outstrips the little attention we pay to prostate cancer, yet prostate cancer accounts for almost a third of all cancers diagnosed in Jamaica. According to one study, we have the highest rate of prostate cancer in the world.

Even if that is not to be believed, it is by far the most common cancer in Jamaica, almost doubling the rate of breast cancer, the second most common cancer. Almost double. Shouldn’t the cancer that kills the most Jamaicans at least be afforded parity in public awareness campaigns and, at the very least, our own empathy for its victims? If we showed half the concern towards prostate cancer as breast cancer, Jamaica would be a better place. But men’s health is not as sexy a cause as women’s health. Simple. Corporate Jamaica is just not as keen on organising fundraising events for males as they are for female causes. Let’s face it. We don’t really care that much about men’s causes, period.

SEVERE COMPLICATIONS

Men are more prone to more severe complications of the chronic diseases that affect both sexes. Men get their whole legs amputated more than women, who tend to get the lesser toe and feet amputations. This because men tend to watch and see more than women who are more likely to promptly seek medical attention when they see something wrong with their bodies. The health-seeking behaviour of Jamaican men is simply horrible. We take care of everyone else and it is the exception when anyone, including ourselves, take care of us.

Some of this stems from cultural norms where the Mandingo warrior black male is not supposed to display weaknesses. A trait passed down from our African slave ancestors. Unfortunately, there is an educational component to this poor health-seeking behaviour as well. It is well documented that socio-economic status and educational level determine health-seeking behaviour. The higher the level of your education, the more likely you are to seek preventative care and the more likely you are to get treatment at earlier stages in a disease process. Here again, Jamaican men are handicapped.

Our education system has consistently failed our boys and the men they become. The gender gap is evident from as early as sixth form in high school and extended before university graduation. We have the most female managers in the world. That is a fact that should rightly be celebrated as evidence that women are not repressed by our culture. This is somewhat true. But how much of this can be explained by the fact that a business owner would have to struggle to find competent men who can be trusted to manage their operations? With persistent underrepresentation in business ownership, politics and in boardrooms, Jamaican women are still not as liberated as the female manager story would suggest.

FRIGHTENING

It is frightening that so many females have at some point in their lives been the victims of sexual abuse. The catcalling on the roads can be very aggressive, even with a male companion present. Domestic abuse and the murder of women is far too common in our society and sexual grooming ingrained in our culture. We still are discriminating against women except in the single instance where we have no choice but to employ them as managers.

Maybe it is because we still marginalise our women with glass ceilings, domestic abuse and limitations in politics, why we feel the need virtue signalling by promoting women’s health. This to show how much we care, and that we are not like other entities who maintain that status quo. Is it that we believe that pushing anything to focus on men’s needs will make us appear misogynistic too? Are we such a warped society that we are marginalising both women and men at the same time, but in different aspects of their lives?

If we only remember to celebrate women on Mother’s Day and cancer awareness months, we are not solving the greatest threats that our women face. It is far more difficult to fix those issues, and in choosing not to take on that burden, we would appear to be a part of the problem, if we didn’t publicly take up a female cause. That must be the reason why we do not push prostate cancer awareness and screening as much as its incidence and death rate deserves. It would have been logical to expend the greater part of our efforts to tackle the greater threats. But we aren’t driven by logic. We are driven by emotions. It cannot be the love and respect that we have for our women if we continue to treat them so badly in other areas of their lives. It must therefore be our collective guilt driving our worthy cause. Really though, when is prostate cancer awareness month?

- Dr Alfred Dawes is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and CEO of Windsor Wellness Centre. Follow him on Twitter @dr_aldawes. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and adawes@ilapmedical.com.