Outreach bus to offer prostate cancer screening

Dr Jyoti Shah has started a mobile community clinic to raise awareness of prostate cancer

A prostate cancer outreach bus will be touring a city centre to encourage men to attend cancer screenings.

North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust's Macmillan consultant urological surgeon Jyoti Shah MBE, is bringing her national campaign to Peterborough to raise awareness of the disease.

One-stop clinics are being set up to make cancer screening more accessible to communities.

On Saturday, 30 December, a bus will be outside Peterborough Town Hall from 09:00 GMT offering health checks.

According to the NHS trust, which runs Peterborough City Hospital, one in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.

It is the most common cancer in men in the UK.

Peterborough city centre is the first location for the mobile community clinic.

The bus is owned by Light Project Peterborough and funded by Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Integrated Care Board (ICB), Peterborough City Council and NHS Charities Together.

Men can get a health check from Dr Shah and her team if they meet the following criteria:

• Be aged between 50 and 80 years

• Have no known prostate cancer

• Have not had a PSA test within the past year

Booking onto the bus will ensure men receive a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) blood test, a prostate examination and have their blood pressure taken.

The NHS website says the PSA test can help detect the disease, but "it's not perfect and will not find all prostate cancers".

The concept follows on from Dr Shah's previous successful community clinics run under the Fighting Prostate Cancer banner.

"Not only do they take the pressure off GPs, but they provide education and awareness in what many may see as a less formal environment," she said.

"A lot of men like to bury their head in the sand when it comes to their health; they are often too busy to go to their doctor or to access the relevant services.

"Because prostate cancer often doesn't have any symptoms - they won't appreciate the need to go and get checked for a problem that effectively doesn't exist."