Chris Ho is not growing up with talking about health.
“My father was a traditional Chinese man, born in Vietnam. You didn’t go to the doctor unless you had to,” said Ho, a 44-year-old father who lives in the river district of Vancouver.
That changed in 2013, then HO, then 32, a lump on one of his testicles noticed. At that time he didn’t have a doctor. His girlfriend, now woman, Maggie, encouraged him to find one. He did that – an Asian male doctor who made him feel understood.
That decision, Ho says, helped to save his life.
After several recurrences of the disease and the removal of both testicles, he hit the disease. But his story is about more than that – it’s about breaking down stereotypes of what it means to be a man.
“It requires strength and courage to contact and ask for help, more than to just suck it up.”
A new national report shows outdated views that can ensure that men postpone help, in combination with health care gaps, stimulates early death among Canadian men, racial and lower income communities, where Stigma, financial problems and limited access to health care services get helping to get a real struggle.
The report, entitled The Real Face of Men’s Health, was released this week by the MOVember Institute of Men’s Health and co-author of the Men’s Health Research Program of the University of BC. It turned out that around 75,000 Canadian men died prematurely in 2023. The two main causes were cancer and heart disease, followed by accidents and suicide.
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