It is with disconcerting surprise that I learnt that middle-aged Malaysian men are the world's largest consumers, per capita basis, of Viagra, as disclosed by Health Minister Chua Jui Meng (front page of The Star today).
Chua said this was a cause for concern rather than celebration as it must reflect that many Malaysian men have problems of erectile dysfunction or had a desire to enhance sexual capabilities.
A local survey done in April 1999 estimated that as many as 1.6 million Malaysian men have erectile dysfunction (ED) ( New Straits Times ).
The Sun in December 1999 reported two deaths; one involving a 30-year-old man who suffered breathing difficulties and collapsed after taking two Viagra pills while having sex with two women in a car, and the other, a 60-year-old man who died from a heart attack after taking half a pill.
A male in his 30s who bought Viagra on the Malaysian black market also had an erection for three days, according to Singapore's South China Morning Times . Doctors had to use hollow needles to drain blood from his penis to reverse the erection, and the unidentified man is now permanently impotent.
How many other Malaysian men had not found themselves in the news but in the official statistics is another matter.
The immediate question is, what are the reasons behind this dubious distinction of high usage of Viagra among Malaysian men?
Could it be that Viagra is freely available in the market at cheap cost? Could it be that the regulatory requirements set by the Health Ministry for its dispensation can easily be circumvented?
Or is it culture as even before the advent of Viagra, Tongkat Ali , a herbal medication ( jamu ) has been widely used in Malaysia by Malaysian men as an aphrodisiac?
Why do our middle-aged men have this desire to bridge the gap between desire to perform and performance itself more than others?
After all, we are quite a conservative culture in which sex does not figure prominently and openly.
One of the reasons could be our affluent lifestyle of eating to obesity (see the number of food establishments and stalls catering for all kinds of food) and its related problems of hypertension, high cholesterol, smoking and drinking.
However, ED may not just be caused by physical health problems. It may be caused by psychogenic factors such as psychological problems, performance anxiety, relationship problems, depression, domestic and work pressures attributable to our socio-cultural conditions.
Our above-40 males live in a competitive culture in just about every field of endeavour, and are stressed out. Many will make a beeline to the pubs after work to de-stress and later when confronted with demands for conjugal duty, to pop the Viagra pill to counteract the problem of brewer's droop!
Where is the sex drive?
If Malaysian men's lacklustre response to vasectomy or male sterilisation is any indication to go by, it would appear that they are low in sex drive but are a "protective'' lot (based on a recent Durex survey) when it comes to their virility which they misguidedly think will be impaired by vasectomy.
(According to the annual survey on government hospitals and Family Planning Association clinics, published in the Social Statistics Bulletin 2000, only 17 out of 39,061 men opted for vasectomy between 1995 and 1999).
Sexual performance anxiety that aggravates ED could then be attributable to our Malaysian men having a low sex drive, which is mismatched against their ego to protect the image of machismo virility and performance that they think only Viagra can bridge.
The fact that recently senator Jamilah Ibrahim (PAS) proposed to allow women to work only during the day so that they could perform their conjugal duties at night and prevent their husbands from committing incest with daughters, as would happen if wives were not at home at night to fulfill husband's sexual urges, would give many men some sleepless nights for different reasons!
The proposal, by the senator, if implemented, would aggravate the problem of performance anxiety (imagine their wives give up night work for that reason) and drive more husbands to resort to Viagra when their wives are awaiting for them every night at home.
At the end of the day, Malaysian men must remember that Viagra only improves penile bloodflow if there is in existence desire and arousal in the mind or emotion in the first place (the brain being the ultimate sexual organ) but if stress or psychosomatic factors or boredom with the same sexual partner over 30 years are the underlying problems, the pill would definitely not be a fix but a harbinger of other problems of permanent erection and impairment.
Lastly, as my name suggests, I am male, and a middle-aged one, in case anyone should wonder.
