Over 100 mps Demand Action on Prostate Cancer Screening
LONDON – More than 100 Members of Parliament are urging Labor’s shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting to approve a national prostate cancer screening program, citing concerns over inequalities in access to testing and the potential to save lives. The call for action comes on the heels of former Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent disclosure of his prostate cancer diagnosis and a new study suggesting screening could significantly reduce deaths.
Currently, the UK lacks a national screening program due to concerns about the accuracy of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests. Though, a letter to Streeting, reported by The Telegraph, argues the existing “opportunistic” testing system is “unstructured, inefficient and unfair,” creating a ”postcode lottery” were access depends on awareness and ability to pay privately. The MPs emphasize that the current system fails to address eroded trust within communities, especially among Black men who are already at higher risk of the disease.
“Yet the data hide what cannot be modelled: eroded trust among communities who feel abandoned. Black men, already at higher risk often believe the system fails them,” the letter states. “Families bear devastating emotional and financial burdens from late-stage disease – costs absent from formal modelling but among the most compelling reasons to act.”
A study published in the New England journal of Medicine last month indicated that prostate cancer screening could reduce deaths by 13%. Researchers found one death from prostate cancer was prevented for every 456 men invited for screening, and one death was averted for every 12 men diagnosed through the screening process.
Cameron, 59, shared his experience with The Times, describing the shock of receiving a prostate cancer diagnosis after initially dismissing elevated PSA scores and MRI findings. “You always dread hearing those words,” he said. ”And then literally as they’re coming out of the doctor’s mouth you’re thinking: ’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 males in the UK, with approximately 55,000 new cases diagnosed annually. The MPs’ letter urges Streeting to act now, arguing that ”waiting would entrench inequality and allow preventable deaths” and that “perfection must not be the enemy of progress.”
