“The next pandemic will be cancer”. To launch thealarm is Professor Oscar Bertetto, director of the Piedmont-Valle d’Aosta Oncology Network Department, during the debate Oncology during and after Covid during the first working session of the Cracking Cancer Forum 2020, which this year is held in digital form.
More than 1 million and 400 thousand cancer screenings lost
If the Covid numbers terrify the whole of Italy, those of cancer they are literally to make your skin crawl. Since the beginning of 2020, more than 1.4 million cancer screenings have been lost in the chaos caused by the pandemic. Two thousand breast cancers, 1600 cervical cancers and as many as 3000 colon adenomas have been overshadowed by the giant shadow of the Coronavirus. Thus, while the bulletins of viral infection cry out to the Apocalypse, those of cancer end up in oblivion. Yet there are, and how they are. Just today, the portal of the Humanitas hospital reported the data relating to the onset of melanoma in the last year: the increase is equal to 20% from 12,300 cases in 2019 to almost 14,900 in 2020. There is no weekly report that holds, there is no ministerial squeeze that can loosen the grip of cancer and not even a vaccine can work miracles.“The next pandemic will be cancer”, warn oncologists.
“Diagnostic paths are not guaranteed”
That in Italy there is not even a Hospital “Covid free” is a fact. But that treatments for cancer patients are set back or, even worse, that even the possibility of a preventive diagnosis is no longer guaranteed is nothing short of gruesome. “There is an extreme shortage of diagnostic services, – Professor Oscar Beretto denounces – in many facilities we cannot send patients because they have not been separated from the Covid areas. We need to have Covid free spaces outside hospitals “. Thus, while hospitals choose “who to save and who not” among the patients in intensive care (this is the unanimous cry of many virologists), people with cancer struggle to get on the list even just for a screening. Is it all the fault of the virus? Apparently, no.
“Cancers will survive Covid”
This is said by Pierfranco Conte, professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Padua and coordinator of the Veneto Oncology Network. “Tumors will unfortunately survive Covid – says the professor during his speech at the forum on cancer taken up by the newspaper The print – and despite decrees and documents it is not true that oncology is preserved because it relies on radiology, endoscopy and other services that are heavily influenced “. Her complaint is aimed at the entire health organization: “There is talk of the Italy model for Covid, – conclude –but our country has the same mortality as Mexico, four times that of Germany, double that of France and England. We must explain why. I agree with de-hospitalization but now we have 60% less beds per inhabitant than in Germany and half that in France. For years the health system has been skeletonized, beyond the political colors of governments“.
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