Creating National Cancer Plans in Europe
Vital Options presents Advocacy in Action (AIA), in partnership with the ESMO Cancer Patient Working Group and in collaboration with the ECCO Patient Advisory Committee. This six-part AIA Forum brings together influential leaders in cancer advocacy, to address the core issues that impact cancer survivorship.
Joining Vital Options CEO, Selma Schimmel, will be AiA co-chair Lorenz Jost, Chair of the ESMO Cancer Patient Working Group, joined by co-moderators Stella Kyriakides, Chair of ECCO Patient Advisory Committee and Europa Donna; Cora Honing, European Cancer Leagues (Dutch Cancer Society); Louis Denis, Europa Uomo; Richard Sullivan, Eurocancercoms PatientView Survey; Francesco De Lorenzo, European Cancer Patient Coalition; and Jan Geissler of CML Advocates Network. Special guest, ESMO President David Kerr, will join leading patient advocates across disease areas in this vital discussion for the European and international cancer patient community.
For more information on ESMO Guides for Patients, CLICK HERE.
Advocacy in Action at the 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Conference was made possible, in part, by:
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Selma Schimmel, Founder & CEO, Vital Options International:
How the patient advocacy community can begin to include cancer survivorship in the writing of national cancer plans. So your comments here may be useful; we don’t have a lot of time left but it’s a general question to throw out to all of you now. How do you take the survivorship issue and get it as an agenda right in there with your national cancer plans that vary across countries?
Kathy Oliver, Co-Chair, International Brain Tumor Alliance:
Well, in the UK, we actually have that taking place. We have the National Cancer Survivorship Initiative, the NCSI, which is actually imbedded in the National Cancer Plan, which is a very, very detailed program of improving survivorship issues for cancer patients. So – I’m not blowing our own horn but – if anybody wants to see how the UK has approached it you can Google NCSI or National Cancer Survivorship Initiative and see the project and how it’s going on.
Dr. Wendy Yared, Director, Association of European Cancer Leagues:
For the last few years we’ve been working on a project looking at National Cancer Plans and what are the roles of cancer leagues in terms of being involved in the development and implementation of national cancer plans. And what we’ve found is that a lot of the cancer leagues provide direct input into the national cancer plans because the leagues, they work directly with the national ministries, with the ministries of the countries, so they have often times in many of the countries they have many good collaborations, and they have a very good relationship with them. And in turn the cancer leagues in the countries have – they also work with the patient organizations – so one suggestion I would have, Selma, is for patient organizations to work with the cancer leagues and providing input into the national cancer plans.
Now if I could just go ahead and just very quickly, a few minutes to talk about the European Partnership Fraction Against Cancer, because this is a EU-funded project that just started this year, it’s going to end…it’s going to run into 2014, and one of their main package is – and there is national cancer plans – so we’re involving national ministries and discussion of national cancer plans, and what can be made better. So here we go, at great opportunity for all the cancer patients who are here at organizations representing patients to go to their national ministries and say ‘we know that all the EU countries are involved in the discussion for the European Partnership and we would encourage you to look and see how we can be more involved in providing our voice into the national cancer plan discussions that are happening at the EU level.
Paolo Casali, MD, ESMO Rep, Rare Cancers Europe:
Just to say that these problems of survivorship are very important and probably medical oncologists should shift from focusing on the diagnosis to dealing with the actual profits of survivorship so the later effects of therapies and so on. In principle however, I think we should also recall that one half of cancer patients are cured of their disease. The risk of relapse may not be zero but this doesn’t mean the patient is cured because my myocardial infarction in five minutes is not the end. But before having it I’m not sick. So when the risk of relapse is so low that it’s lower than many other risks of living, the patient is cured. So understanding this point is very important; it’s very important for the patient first of all, it’s important also for employers and so on because clearly we are dealing with one half of cancer patients who are cured, and maybe they don’t know that they are cured just because they have a considerable risk of relapse.
END OF VIDEO