Men`s health `neglected` in India, prostrate cancer cases rise

New Delhi: Men's health remains a neglected area though diseases like cancer and those related to heart and lifestyle grip them two to four times more than women, say doctors, noting that most national health programmes focus mostly on communicable diseases and on children and women.

"Men's Health remains neglected and is not a focus of any national programme as most of them focus on mostly on communicable diseases, child and woman health.

"The average life span of man is five years shorter than woman in India," said Dr Rajeev Sood, head of department of Urology in RML Hospital,

He said cancer, stone disease as well as those of heart and life style grip men 2-4 times more than women.

To address the issue and discuss health programmes that can be framed for them on a national scale, the Urological Society of India is all set to host the 47th annual conference here from tomorrow.

"Studies have shown that the incidence of prostate cancer are growing by one per cent every year. A new case occurs every 2.5 minutes and a man dies from prostate cancer every 17 minutes.

"It has become the second most frequently diagnosed cancer after lung cancer. Of the 7.6 million deaths due to cancer worldwide, one-sixth are caused by prostate cancer," said Sood who is organising secretary of USICON 2014.

The conference aims at enhancing the skills of urologists in the performance of advanced urologic endoscopic surgery.

The five-day conference will be attended by over 3000 urologists across India, SAARC countries, US, Europe (UK, France, Germany, Spain) and Australia.

India has a population of over 1.3 billion, but only a handful of Urologists to cater to urological problems.

It will also address numerous important issues of national concern like organ donation and urinary genital cancers among others.

The conference will begin with the pre-conference live workshop which will feature robotic and laparoscopic surgeries in 3D.

The focus will be the technological advances like Fusion Biopsy and Photodynamic therapy for focal ablation of prostate cancer and pharmacological advances in terms of newer molecules that can be disease altering.