All right mate

GLINTING in the bright early summer sunshine, the curves of The Sage building on Gateshead's quayside look magnificent. As the centrepiece of the new look, streamlined, scrubbed-up North-East, the shapely new concert hall, next to the Baltic art gallery, symbolises a region looking to the future.

But the illusion of modernity is only skin-deep.

Hard statistics reveal that the health of men in this part of the country region lags behind much of the rest of England.

Still influenced by the hard-working, hard-drinking working class culture of the pits and the shipyards, it means the men in the region have one of the shortest life expectancies in the country.

It is this legacy of unhealthy lifestyles which continues to cast a shadow over the 'new' North-East, which made it appropriate that the sixth National Men's Health Week 2007 was launched at The Sage this week.

It is the first time the event has been launched outside London and it has attracted public health specialists and experts from all over the country.

Dr Ian Banks, the extrovert Liverpudlian GP who organised the very first Men's Health Week in 2002, is clearly delighted that the focus has moved from the South to the North.

"It is very refreshing to have a meeting outside London. We should make it the norm each year to travel around the country," he tells the audience.

Launching the week's events, which include the release of a range of new car maintenance-style 'owner's workshop manuals' aimed at men, Dr Banks says the very idea of "men's health" would have been greeted with blank looks a few years ago.

But within a few years there has been a sea-change in opinion and at that very moment literally thousands of events connected with men's health are happening from Australia to China and from America to Europe.

"Ten years ago you wouldn't be sitting here because there was no such thing as 'men's health', it just didn't exist," says Dr Banks. "It is still so new, there are only two professors of men's health in the entire world."

While the focus this week has been ways of improving men's health - which still lags behind the health of British women - Dr Banks stresses that the campaign is for everyone.

"One of the successes is that this is not seen as a 'them and us' exercise. It is not a battle of the sexes. We are coming together to improve the health of men and the health of men and women are often inextricably linked," he adds.

He points to the campaign to encourage men to get tested for the sexually transmitted infection chlamydia as something that benefits both sexes.

"Chlamydia can destroy a young woman's life, leading to ectopic pregnancy, pelvic inflammation and infertility. If you are male all you get is an itchy willy. This shows what impact that ill health in one sex can have on the other sex."

This year's event is a collaboration between Men's Health Forum, the Newcastle-based Community Foundation and the Idle Eric Campaign, which uses a Viz-style cartoon character to get healthy messages across to North-East men.

The theme for 2007 is to highlight the issues affecting men with long-term health conditions. These include the fact that men are more likely than women to develop a number of major long-term conditions that are preventable - such as heart disease and diabetes.

Men do not currently make good use of primary care, including GP and pharmacy services. And they do not use advice and support services as well or as effectively as women.

To coincide with MHW, new research based on a survey involving 905 men shows that a fear of visiting the doctor could be putting the health of more than 3.5m men in the UK at risk.

George Hepburn, chief executive of the Newcastle-based Community Foundation, is a big fan of Idle Eric, a cartoon character designed to appeal to the average North-East male, who has been used to promote healthy living messages for the last four years.

Using 'blokish' language that Geordies or Mackems (the project has been funded by Tyneside and Wearside primary care trusts) will feel comfortable with, Eric has been encouraging North-Eastern males to get into walking, cycling and to visit their GP for health checks.

Eric first appeared in 2002 when the Newcastle-based Men's Health Fund - an offshoot of the Community Foundation - was launched with funding from the William Leech Charitable Fund. Aimed at raising awareness of healthy living, the fund, in partnership with North-East PCTs, used Idle Eric as a campaign mascot. This led to the beer-bellied, trainer-wearing England fan appearing on buses, Metro trains and billboards all over Tyneside and Wearside.

In the introduction to one of his booklets, Eric sums up the need for change: "Us lads are pretty poor when it comes to looking after ourselves... If you owned a car, you'd take care of it, so why not do the same for your body? Up to age 16, boys and girls go to their GP a similar amount of times - then lads stop. Usually, the next time a bloke sees his GP is in his 50s, with chest pains after 30-odd years of beer, tabs and lardy food!"

Eric urges 'blokes' to take regular exercise, eat a well-balanced diet and see their doctor if things start to go wrong.

To encourage his fans, Eric has actually been shedding pounds over the years. Viz artist Steve Donald, who invented Eric, has been subtly shaving a few inches off his waistline.

Controversially, funding for a further extension of the Idle Eric campaign has been put on hold for the time being.

North-East GP Dr George Rae, who has featured in the recent BBC 1 television show, Street Doctors, which tackles men in the street about their health, says some way has to be found to reach out to men who do not regularly see their family doctor.

He praises a plan to contact men over 50 in North Tyneside to invite them to visit their local pharmacy to get their blood pressure and cholesterol levels checked.

Henry Cayton, the national director for patients and the public, the so-called "patients' tsar", says men are their own worst enemies when it comes to health. "Everybody knows the basic facts about health but putting this into practice is a difficult matter. Health is created where people live, love, work and play. That is where we need to get this message across"

Mr Cayton predicts that a new duty of gender equality, which has to be in place by October 30 this year, will help NHS organisations improve services for men.

n Men who want more information about healthy living and how to access booklets should visit www.malehealth.co.uk. Idle Eric's Road To Health booklet can be downloaded by visiting www.idleeric.co.uk.

Servicemen and ex-servicemen may be interested in a self-help manual to prevent back injuries produced by the Royal British Legion and available via www.britishlegion.org.uk/uploads/documents/rblbackproblems2.pdf