The European Union is committed to the fight against cancer and plans to commit 4 billion euros to finance prevention and research programs.
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The EU unveiled a plan to fight cancer on Wednesday, including 4 billion euros to finance prevention, research and treatment deployment programs, at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic is hindering diagnoses.
«Unfortunately, today across the EU we have varying levels of access to prevention programs, different rates of early detection, diagnosis, treatment and survival. It’s inexcusable“, Said Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides, during a press conference.
«We want to ensure that all sick people have the same chance of survival, wherever they live», She added, on the eve of World Cancer Day, ensuring that a “register of inequalities” in the face of this disease would be set up by Brussels.
Within the framework of its vast project of “Europe of health”, the European executive intends to release funds to strengthen access to effective screening and diagnostics, early detection offering the best chances of survival.
Better coordinate health systems
The goal is that by 2025 at least 90% of people qualified for colon, breast or cervical cancer screenings can access it.
Brussels plans to broaden its support for screening for gastric, prostate and lung cancers.
In 2020, some 2.7 million people in the EU have been diagnosed with cancer, and 1.3 million Europeans died from it; the economic cost of cancer for the Twenty-Seven is estimated at 100 billion euros per year.
The current pandemic has also severely hampered screening programs and treatment.
The EU wishes to better coordinate European health systems by organizing by 2025 a transnational network of recognized “oncological treatment centers”, to which 90% of patients should have access by 2030. An initiative to coordinate research programs will be launched this year.
The Commission will step up prevention, while up to 40% of cancers are considered “preventable”: it sets the objective of vaccinating 90% of young European women against the papillomavirus which causes cervical cancer.
«It is not a political commitment, but a personal one“Observed Stella Kyriakides, who said she was diagnosed with cancer 24 years ago.
The European Cancer Patients Coalition (ECPC) welcomed the plan, “particularly applauding his comprehensive approach“And the fact that he attacks”complications and comorbidities affecting the quality of life of patients».
Fight against tobacco, alcohol and red meat
The European executive will also strive to further reduce alcohol consumption, pollution, but above all smoking, by revising directives on tobacco production and taxation.
«We want to create a tobacco-free generation, with less than 5% of Europeans smoking tobacco by 2040, compared to around 25% today”, Said Ms. Kyriakides.
The question is more sensitive for alcohol: “The EU is certainly not going to impose labels on wine describing it as dangerous, that will not happen. Wine is part of our lifestyle», Insisted the Vice-President of the Commission, Margaritis Schinas.
Likewise, the EU will “re-examine” its subsidies for the promotion of red or processed meats, now considered carcinogenic, but no longer talks about the possibility of ending them as was the case in a preliminary version of the plan, regrets the environmental organization Greenpeace.
“A disappointment” for European Bureau of Consumers Unions (BEUC), according to whom “it makes good sense for the EU to stop funding meat ads entirely».
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