A consultant who has spent almost two decades working in East London has been awarded an MBE for his services to the NHS.

Dr Frank Chinegwundoh, 52, has spent 17 years working in Newham, specialising in cancer care and raising awareness about prostate cancer among men from the African Carribbean community.

But in addition to his day job, Dr Chinegwundoh has also set up a drop in clinic persuading men to be tested for possible prostate cancer symptoms.

The clinic has been so successful that it recently won a Quality in Care, Excellence in Oncology award in the Helping People Live Longer category. It was also highly commended in the Patient Experience section.

The clinic’s aim was to get “hard-to-reach” men, who might not visit their GP, to drop into the clinic based in Newham’s African and Caribbean Community Centre.

Of the 328 men who attended a consultation, 59 were referred for secondary care, nine were diagnosed with prostate cancer and three received treatment for other conditions.

Dr Chinegwundoh, Barts Health Consultant Urologist, who led the project, also set up the charity Cancer Black Care in 1998 and helped raise more than £1.5million.

He believes his honour in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List may have been awarded for this additional work and he is overjoyed at receiving it .

He said: “I am delighted and thrilled. It is amazing and I am overwhelmed, so I feel on top of the world. It is great to be recognised at the top for things done ‘over and above’. People that I know from all over the world have sent kind congratulatory messages.

“I’m pleased for my community, the hospitals I work in and I’m pleased for Cancer Black Care that one of their own has been recognised.”

Dr Chinegwundoh studied at St George’s Hospital Medical School, Tooting, London. He qualified in 1984 and became the first black British urologist