Dr Ian Banks, President, Men's Health Forum, looks at how men can be encouraged to take part in new screening for bowel cancer.

"Earlier this month, the UK Government announced plans to send out bowel cancer screening home testing kits to people in their 60s. The tests will identify those who may have the disease, and by 2009, everyone aged 60-69 will be asked to self-test every two years.

People taking part in the scheme will send stool samples to a laboratory, where they will be analysed for the presence of blood. The government hopes the privacy of the home testing kits will overcome people's natural reluctance to talk about symptoms.
The programme is to be phased in from April 2006 and around 25 per cent of England, or 300,000 people, will be covered in the first year of the programme. By 2009, the aim is for two million to receive the kits annually.

All this is very good news for men. Bowel cancer is the third most common form of cancer in men. More than 15,000 men a year are diagnosed with it in England. Also, men are almost twice as likely to die from bowel cancer as women and at a younger age.

However, simply sending out home testing kits may not be enough to tackle this problem. It is vital that men are actively encouraged to take up this opportunity and that strategies are developed to ensure that men do take part in this screening.

Pilots studies that have been carried out show there is a 10 per cent lower take up among men than women. In fact only around half of men in the studies returned samples, many of them because they were frightened of getting a bad result. Men were significantly less motivated than women to take part in the pilot screening programme. The evidence was that younger, employed men in lower social classes were the least likely group of all to respond to the offer of a test.

It is therefore important that the information sent with the kits takes into account gender differences and that men receive material that has been designed specifically for them. Persuading men of the value of screening will be essential to the success of this programme."