Health authorities have been told to improve the appalling state of men's health - which leads to more premature deaths and illnesses than among women - by targeting them for priority care.

The Department of Health issued the command after mounting concern that the yawning health gap between men and women is costing thousands of lives.

The health of British men is so bad that each year 20,000 more of them die before the age of 65 than women. They are more likely to suffer heart disease, cancer and HIV. Men aged 20 to 24 are three times more likely to die than young women.

The new policy follows an admission that men suffer because previous health campaigns have targeted women, and men have far too little access to health services.

Health authorities will have to monitor how sick men in their region are and, if they are suffering significantly more than women, take steps to remedy the situation. A Health Department spokesman said: "Health authorities have been told to target all inequalities, including that based on gender. If in a local area men are twice as likely to die from heart disease as women, they will be expected to try and target services at men."

There is growing realisation among politicians and doctors that men's health has been neglected. This month, MPs will launch the first All Party Group on Men's Health to raise awareness and coordinate policies.

Official figures show men are more likely to die than women across all age ranges. They are twice as likely to die in accidents and three times as likely to commit suicide. Young men are almost five times more likely to kill themselves than young women.

Men are more likely to smoke, to have an unhealthy diet, to be overweight, and to expose themselves to sun. They are three times as likely to be alcoholic as women, and four times as likely to be registered drug addicts.

However, men are about half as likely to visit their GP as women. Overall, men can expect to live 74.6 years, five years less than women. An unskilled man can expect to live 11 years less than a professional woman. An unskilled black man lives almost 15 years less than a professional white woman. The excess of premature male deaths is the equivalent of a jumbo jet full of men crashing each week.

Public health minister Yvette Cooper said last summer that the difference between men and women was the "biggest health inequality of all". The government wants to combat the assumption that the poor state of men's health is all their own fault.

There is eight times as much money spent on specific female health issues as on male ones. Women are screened for breast cancer and cervical cancer, and will soon be screened for ovarian cancer. But there is no screening programme for prostate cancer, which kills four times as many men as cervical cancer kills women. Some countries in Europe, and many states in the US, screen for prostate cancer, which this month claimed the life of libel lawyer George Carman.

The government's Health Development Agency, which has appointed its first men's health officer, will be working out ways to raise awareness of health among men, and encourage them to visit their GP more frequently. Surgeries will be asked to open after work and at weekends, as men are more likely to work full-time. Health authorities should make men more aware of health issues by working through betting shops, and opening clinics in pubs and sports centres.

Making men's health a priority has largely been the work of the women health ministers Tessa Jowell and Yvette Cooper.