A PROSTATE cancer campaigner claims the government is turning a deaf ear to his call to screen for the disease.

Derek Hartley-Brown, of Poole, has spent 20 years of his retirement raising awareness of the cancer and demanding that all men be screened.

But successive health secretaries have resisted his calls to give all men over 40 the PSA (prostate specific antigen) test for the disease.

His comments came at the end of March’s Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, a campaign fronted by Dave Prowse, who played Darth Vader in Star Wars.

Mr Hartley-Brown, chairman of the Prostate Cancer Awareness Association, demanded that his GP give him the PSA test after visiting America and seeing a TV campaign encouraging people to take the test.

He had a slightly high PSA reading and had radiotherapy for cancer.

“For 20 years I have concentrated my retirement to bring awareness and early prevention of this dreadful disease by giving talks to many clubs and on radio and TV,” said Mr Hartley-Brown.

He has raised the issue with health secretaries at the annual Britain Against Cancer meeting in London.

“At the 2011 meeting of Britain Against Cancer I achieved a short timed discussion with Andrew Lansley but got the impression that what I said fell on deaf ears,” he said.

“Still to date no there has been no government action. I think however that the Secretary of State for Health is more interested in the recent implant scare than that of the 25,000 men a year dying of prostate cancer.”

In the Daily Echo last week, Royal Bournemouth Hospital consultant Kevin Turner said the issue of screening was “hugely controversial” and said consultant urologists were “generally quite wary” of widespread PSA screening.

He said the government had “sat on the fence” over the issue.

Mr Hartley-Brown said: “This man says the PSA test is not 100 per cent.

“ I know that, but it provides a chance of it being caught in time. If you put the man in the street off having the PSA test, then if he’s got prostate cancer, it will kill him.”

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: “The UK National Screening Committee concluded routine testing for prostate cancer should not be introduced because the risks of over-diagnosis far outweighed any potential benefit.

“However, if a man without symptoms of prostate cancer would like a test he can get one free on the NHS after consultation with a GP.”

The government has said its policy would be reviewed in three years, or earlier if major new research becomes available.