by More than 100 MPs, including Rishi Sunak, have called on Wes Streeting to introduce screening for prostate cancer.
Britain’s National Screening Committee, a government body that advises ministers and the NHS on all aspects of screening, will recommend whether men at higher risk of the disease should be offered tests. According to the Telegraph, a letter will be sent to the Health Secretary later this week.
Sunak, who leads a cross-party coalition of 125 MPs, met Streeting on Monday evening to hand him an open letter calling on the government to introduce testing so that men at highest risk, including black men, men with a family history of prostate, breast or ovarian cancer and those who carry the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, are “no longer left behind”.
Related: David Cameron reveals prostate cancer diagnosis and calls for targeted screening
The letter states: “Our current opportunistic PSA [prostate-specific antigen] The testing system is unstructured, inefficient and unfair – a postcode lottery in which some men succeed because they know they have to ask or can pay privately, while others are turned away despite repeated requests.
“Yet the data hides something that cannot be modeled: weakened trust in communities that feel abandoned. Black men, who are already at higher risk, often believe the system is failing them. Families bear devastating emotional and financial burdens from late-stage illness – costs that are not accounted for in formal models but are among the most compelling reasons to act.”
“We now have the tools to conduct screening safely and effectively, but the system is frozen, waiting for next-generation trial data.
“Waiting would worsen inequality and enable preventable deaths. The evidence is strong enough to act now. Perfection cannot be the enemy of progress.”
The move comes a day after David Cameron revealed he was being treated for prostate cancer. He called for a targeted screening program.
Cameron, 59, told the Times: “You always hope for the best. Your PSA is high – it’s probably nothing.”
“You have an MRI scan with a few black spots on it. You think, ‘Ah, that’s probably OK.’ But when the biopsy comes back, it says you have prostate cancer.
“You’re always afraid to hear those words. And then when they literally come out of the doctor’s mouth, you think, ‘Oh no, he’s going to say it. He’s going to say it. Oh God, he said it.'”
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK, with around 55,000 new cases every year.
Due to concerns about the accuracy of PSA testing, there is no screening program for the form of the disease in the UK.
A study published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine found that prostate cancer screening could reduce deaths by 13%.
Researchers found that one prostate cancer death was prevented among 456 men invited for screening and one prostate cancer death was prevented among 12 men diagnosed with prostate cancer.
