Chile: “Cancer kills more people than covid-19 and is not overcome like the pandemic”

He cancer “kills more people than covid-19 and it is not overcome like the pandemic”. However, for its combat in Latin America, “You don’t see the same budgetary efforts” that in the face of the coronavirus emergency, stated the executive director of the National Cancer Forum of ChiliCarolina Goic.

During the covid-19 pandemic ““We were able to prioritize people’s lives, with all the costs (that this entailed), to have online, updated information systems, which we would very much like to have in cancer.”highlighted this 50-year-old former Chilean senator and former representative.

If you count “With the same people, the same wonderful committed teams that there are in health, why don’t we do it in cancer, which is also a health emergency?”asked Goic, a survivor of the disease and promoter of Chile’s National Cancer Law, enacted in August 2020 and which regulates public action regarding this disease in the southern country.

Cancer, argued this activist who became a politician, is “between the first and second cause of death in our countries” and the delay in diagnosis caused precisely by the emergency of the pandemic is now being expressed with a growing wave of cases. “So we need to not do the same thing we were doing in cancer before the pandemic, but rather take exceptional measures,” he asserted.

According to data from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), cancer is one of the main causes of mortality in the Americas. In 2020, it caused 1.4 million deaths, 47% of them in people 69 years of age or younger.

The number of cancer cases in the American continent was estimated at 4 million in 2020 and is projected to increase to 6 million in 2040, according to PAHO.

Legislate to fight cancer

Given this scenario, “The call is, indeed, to invest in people. “Early diagnosis is essential” dcancer, “but it must be accompanied by the guarantee of treatment and continuity” of this, said the former Chilean senator.

For these objectives, it is very useful to have a Cancer Law as a tool to respond. “what the country needs and what a society wants” to face the disease.

In the case of Chile“what we did in the law is to say that cancer is not only about” with treatment, but must be addressed “in all its dimensions: from prevention, early detection, timely access to treatment throughout the territory, which implies a network of oncology centers, human capital, an investment plan,” and research for “better understand why there is a type of cancer in one place or another”, he explained.

“Something very important in our countries is that the law transcends a period of Government”ensuring that your initiatives “be transformed into a State policy not dependent on the political cycle, which is what we need to address a problem of this magnitude,” he added.

The situation in Panama

Goic visited Panama City to participate in the forum “Towards a cure for breast cancer, in equity, innovation and public policy”organized by Roche, the United Nations, the City of Knowledge and the National Cancer Association.

Panama, Goic considered, has a statistic “very hard” of the disease, with 299 deaths and 1,076 new cases diagnosed in 2020, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO).

“The figures in Panama indicate that the incidence and mortality of breast cancer is increasing by 2%, which is why I think this movement for a cure is so important, joining forces from civil society, the UNRoche, and that concrete commitments are reached.”

Because the fight against breast cancer involves “a complete chain: from how we educate women to look at their body, detect signs that seem strange, to do your exam once a year if you are over 40 and worry if you have a family history, but also the system has to have the capacity to respond to that effort made by communities and women”he added.

According to the Global Cancer Observatory (Globocan), breast cancer has surpassed lung cancer as the most commonly diagnosed cancer worldwide, accounting for one in eight cancer diagnoses. Cases of this type of cancer are expected to increase by up to 40% in the next 20 years, especially in developing countries.

Source: EFE