Breast cancer is much better resourced than men's cancers

Prostate cancer kills around 10,000 men a year - four times the number of women who die from cervical cancer, which also gets much more resources.

Dr Banks said: "We don't want to be seen to be knocking women or saying that money should be switched from women's health to men's health.

"But we need to maintain women's health at the same time as improving male health.

"Women's health is inextricably linked to male health."

The forum's report, entitled Men's Health - a Public Health Review, calls for a public health strategy for men.

Public health minister Tessa Jowell attended the launch to give her support to the initiative.

Improving access

The forum, set up in 1994 by the Royal College of Nursing, said the government and other agencies should make more effort to help men access health resources.

A spokeswoman said: "We need to catch men early by targeting boys at school.

"We need to access men and not rely on them coming into doctors' surgeries.

"Men tend to be put off by clinical settings."

Outreach work at sports clubs and pubs had shown some success, she said.

The forum is also calling for more training to be given to doctors on how to get men to open up about their health worries.

Crisis lines for men and post-redundancy programmes are also proposed as well as practical measures to make suicide more difficult, for example, increasing the use of blister packs for paracetamols.