MADRID, (EUROPA PRESS).- Experts in breast cancer have highlighted, during the Digital meeting ‘The Future of the Approach to Breast Cancer’ of the Daiichi Sankyo Alliance and AstraZeneca, organized in collaboration with Europa Press, the need to improve the research in this area, innovation and, at the same time, equity in access to treatments and diagnostic methods.
And it is that, as has been shown, every 30 seconds a woman in the world is diagnosed with this type of tumor, which is already the most frequent tumor and, in the specific case of Spain, it is calculated every month causes the death of more than 500 people.
The experts have focused on the need to guarantee that patients are cared for in multidisciplinary committees, as highlighted by the head of the Medical Oncology Service at the General University Hospital of Elche (Alicante) and GEICAM researcher, Álvaro Rodríguez Lescure.
“There are still many patients who are not addressed by a multidisciplinary committee, more in private than in public settings, but it is a real situation, despite the fact that it has been shown that the involvement of multidisciplinary committees in addressing these patients has increased survival”, highlighted the doctor.
In this sense, Rodríguez Lescure has also underlined the need to improve the approach to metastatic disease and the awareness that breast cancer “is not curable” and is still “far” from being able to become chronic.
A STATE PACT
The experts have insisted on the need to improve innovation in breast cancer since, as the representative of the Spanish Federation of Breast Cancer (FECMA), Paula González Peña, has claimed, innovation increases survival and the quality of patients’ lives. “We believe that there should be a State pact so that access to innovation is equal throughout the National Health System”, she emphasized.
In this sense, the head of the Hospital Pharmacy service at the San Carlos Clinical Hospital in Madrid, José Manuel Rodríguez Sesmero, has assured that the innovation that has been taking place in recent years in new treatments is being “formidable” given that it has changed the life of the people.
“Breast cancer survival is improving and significant progress is being made, so the future is hopeful, but ensuring equity remains a crucial issue, because if therapies exist but are not made available to patients is a frustration that has no qualifications when people’s lives are at risk,” said the lawyer and doctor of Health Sciences, Julio Sánchez Fierro.
The director of the Farmaindustria access department, Isabel Pineros, spoke in the same way, referring to the annual report Indicators of Access to Innovative Therapies in Europe (WAIT Indicator), prepared by the consulting firm Iqvia for the European Federation of Associations of the Pharmaceutical Industry (Efpia), which points out that Spanish patients only have access to just over half of the medicines authorized in Europe in the last four years and take more than 500 days to do so.
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