A 12-year-old boy with a rare brain tumour has been denied radical cancer treatment by the NHS and now his mother has launched a public appeal to fund the therapy.

Donna Henry is trying to raise £150,000 so her son Rashard can receive proton beam therapy - a type of radiotherapy which stops once the protons meet cancerous cells, causing much less damage to surrounding tissue. 

It is the same treatment that helped five-year-old Ashya King last year after his parents took him from hospital and took him to Portugal, sparking an international manhunt.

Proton beam therapy is not currently available on the NHS, but in special circumstances it will pay for patients to receive the treatment abroad.

Rashard, of Tooting Bec, a talented tennis player with dreams to one day compete at Wimbledon, suffers from a highly-aggressive brain tumour called diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas (DIPG).

His mother believes he would benefit from the highly-targeted therapy because of the tumour's difficult to reach location in the brain stem and fears conventional radiotherapy could have dangerous side effects.

Ms Henry, an education co-ordinator at Wandsworth Council, said the treatment will be her son's "last chance" as he has already received one course of radiotherapy which failed to destroy the tumour.

She said: "I'm disappointed and I think they could have been more proactive. It's like you are just left if they refuse your application."

She added: "The people who decided haven't even seen him before. This is Rashard's last chance to receive treatment again so I am just trying to get the best possible type. He is desperate to have it."

Rashard had the cancer diagnosed in July 2014 after an optician noticed the nerve under his left eye connected to the brain wasn't working and advised him to go to hospital.

The tumour was then discovered by doctors at St George's Hospital in Tooting following an MRI scan.

Rashard had ten sessions of radiotherapy treatment to get rid of the tumour, the last of which finished in August last year.

He responded well, but during a check up last month doctors found the tumour started to grow back. Doctors at the Royal Marsden in Sutton put in an application to the NHS for Rashard to receive proton beam therapy abroad but it was turned down.

An NHS England spokesman said: "We have real sympathy with any family facing these illnesses.

"These are really difficult decisions, which is why they are made by a panel of expert clinicians, based on evidence on which patients would benefit from PBT, and clinical consensus on whether going abroad for treatment risks a negative impact on a patient’s other health and care needs."

The first NHS proton beam therapy units are due to open in 2018 at University College London Hospital and in Manchester.

Donate to Ms Henry's appeal at gofundme.com/mxrzmxkk.