Launched 10th June 2024, Men and Cancer: A Charter for Action highlights the key steps that must be taken to create better cancer outcomes for men globally.

Too many men are developing and dying unnecessarily from cancer. The global cancer mortality rate is 110 per 100,000, 43% higher than for women. This heavy burden has multiple causes including the failure of health promotion strategies to reach men effectively, barriers that make it harder for men to use primary care services, limited access to cancer screening services and HPV and Hepatitis B vaccination programmes, and greater exposure to carcinogens in the workplace.

A previous report by GAMH, Gone Missing, showed that men and cancer is an issue largely unaddressed in cancer policy at the global level.

The Charter calls for global action in 10 key areas, including:

1. The integration of gender into global and national cancer plans in a way that is inclusive of men.
2. The consistent collection and publication of sex-disaggregated data.
3. Cancer prevention initiatives that target men explicitly.
4. The inclusion of boys and men in vaccination programmes that can prevent cancer.
5. Improved male access to colorectal cancer screening and, as soon as possible, screening for prostate, lung and anal cancers too.
6. A sustained focus on those men at greatest risk of cancer, including men who are ethnically and racially marginalised, on low incomes, gay/bisexual/transgender or homeless.

Many more male cancer cases are predicted in every continent by 2050. But this is not inevitable – the actions highlighted in GAMH’s Charter would, over time, make a significant difference.

The Charter argues that cancer in men is an issue that has been neglected for too long. But we can now begin to put that right.

• Read the Charter in full

June 2024