Do bladder and bowels get sufficient media and government recognition?

Do you think that having a bladder and bowel disfunction gets the recognition that it should? Of course it doesn’t. No. I mean it’s the great unsayable. I’m a journalist, I’m a frontline journalist, I’ve also been an Editor, I know exactly how desk Editors react if you say, “I want to talk about bladder or bowel incontinence or function or malfunction”. They look at you as if you’ve got five heads. Its “Woah I’m not putting that in the paper!” You know, no way is that sexy enough to put in the mainstream media. That’s not what will sell newspapers because 90% of able-bodied people will look at it and go “Whah, I don’t want to read about that!”

Yet we cannot, and we seem unable to have the will to divert enough funding into what is an essential bodily function which fails as we grow older. It is potentially as important as Dementia but because it’s pee and poo, particularly pee, we don’t want to talk about it. Politicians don’t want to talk about it because it doesn’t win them any votes. I think we have to start talking about bladders and bowels in the same way as we are now talking about Dementia.

The whole sort of growing old thing and you know - Cancer Research advertising and saying that one day there will be a cure for all cancers, no one will die of cancer, no but then they are just gonna die of bladder and bowel problems. We need someone to publicise the fact that, someone to investigate on behalf of the Government and to publicise the fact that far too much money is being spent reactively on bladder, in particular, bladder problems on continence amongst the elderly, amongst disabled people and that if there were better solutions, I am sure there will be a far greater costs benefit, and this would also spare an awful lot of human misery.