The Popular Parliamentary Group has registered in the Congress of Deputies a Non-Law Proposition (NLP) with which they ask the Government to promote “whatever measures are necessary to develop the early diagnosis of Cancer throughout Spain to levels of activity at least similar to those registered before the Covid-19 pandemic ”.
For this, the popular ones propose to the Ministry of Health that they take advantage of the upgrade expected of the Cancer Strategy of the National Health System, scheduled for this Wednesday at the meeting of the Interterritorial Council, and “from consensus with the autonomous communities and coordination with scientific societies and patient associations.”
The PP includes the need to make “progress in early treatment and redoubling the efforts made in R + D + i to speed up diagnostic and therapeutic advances”
At the same time, the PP includes the need to make “progress in early treatment and redoubling the efforts made in R + D + i to speed up the achievement of diagnostic and therapeutic advances, as well as its full availability to all citizens in conditions of equity and accessibility ”.
IMPACT OF COVID-19
In its explanatory statement, the popular formation cites how the Covid-19 pandemic has had “a impact clinical negative in cancer ”since up to“ one in five patients have not been diagnosed or have been diagnosed late ”. They also point out that “the number of first consultations from March to June 2020 has been reduced by 21%,” face-to-face consultations have fallen by 30%, also by 30% fewer patients recruited for clinical trials, 57% less than diagnostic activity in cytology or 41% less in biopsies.
On the other hand, they mention how the report ‘Cancer figures in Spain in 2021’ quantifies in 276.239 the new cases what will be diagnosed in our country this year. However, the popular believe that this figure is “surely lower than the real one due to the negative impact that Covid-19 is having on the general functioning of the health system and, specifically, on the adequate and continuous performance of screening with which to detect tumors such as breast and colon tumors, among others ”.
Finally, they point to the data provided by the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology (SEOM), which sets the new undiagnosed cases at 21%, about 55,000 people, “only during the time period corresponding to the first wave of the pandemic.”
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