The Men's Health Forum has written to the Health Secretary seeking confirmation from her that the government still intends to roll out a national screening programme for bowel cancer

The spending freeze which has engulfed the government's health budget in recent months has raised questions about whether the Department of Health will go ahead with its plans for a national bowel cancer screening programme.

Recent reports in the media have raised speculation that the roll out of the programme could be at risk, despite the government's recent reaffirmation in its recent White Paper, Our Health, our care, our say: a new direction in community services, that it intends the programme to go ahead from April 2006.

However, the pressure within the health service to save money is now intense, following news that several NHS trusts are running into deficit. It was for this reason that the Men's Health Forum recently wrote to the Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, asking her for urgent clarification about the government's plans for the screening programme. The letter says that the speculation has caused a great deal of anxiety and that any further delay in confirming funding will be hugely detrimental.

Research by the Men's Health Forum has found that men are disproportionately affected by cancer and more likely to die as a result of the disease. This is true for bowel cancer, especially cancer of the rectum, as well as for almost all of the other common cancers that both men and women "share".

The National Bowel Cancer Screening Programme therefore has the potential to make a major contribution to tackling gender health inequalities in cancer.

If the government does go ahead with the programme, it will be one of the first such programmes in the world and will be the first cancer screening programme in this country to include men as well as women.

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.

There is no doubt that a screening programme, involving home testing kits being sent to everyone aged 60 to 69 every two years, could prevent thousands of deaths a year. But it is vital that men are encouraged to take up the screening. Pilot studies show that there is a 10 per cent lower take up among men than women. In fact only around half of men returned samples, many of them because they were frightened of getting a bad result.

It is therefore important that 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. But first we have to persuade the government to roll out the programme as promised.