I participated yesterday in two events. The first one, it was a panel about the use of law in the cancer control field. It was interesting because I had the opportunity to share what we are doing in Mexico using law, legal mechanisms and public policy programmes on behalf of cancer patients’ rights. And also I talked about a commemoration of the World Cancer Day that we are doing in the Latin America region as a membership of the UICC. Today we will talk about COVID-19 and the affect to the cancer patients’ rights.
What kinds of reforms are required in cancer control and why are they important?
In Mexico, as well as in Latin America, we are facing this problem about not early detection of cancer. So we have between 70-80% of the cases detected in late stages of disease. So we are promoting this legal reform focussed on the states of Mexico. We have 32 states in our country and what we are doing is presenting this legal reform to provide a paid day off for the workers in order to let them go to have this screening in order to detect earlier breast cancer, prostate cancer and cervix cancer. It is the main legal reform that we are promoting right there in Mexico.
What has been done so far in gaining support for these reforms?
We have had approved this legal reform in three states of Mexico; three state congresses have approved this legal reform. It was awesome, having the support from the legislators. The work we have in the future is go to every, every state and present the same reform. I don’t think that we will have any type of problem with that; the main problem is the agenda, the political agenda because it is hard work we have as a civil society to put, to state, cancer control in the public agency so the legislators can be interested in promoting the initiative, legal initiative, that is provided by civil society.
Where are you standing in terms of support for this agenda?
It became a big problem in Mexico because we are facing a lack of treatment, a lack of oncological therapies, that affects, of course, minors and adults. So because of this main problem the cancer control agenda is all the time on social media, newspapers. So it causes legislator stakeholders to have more attention on what is going on about cancer control.
What does the future look like in terms of improvements to cancer control in LMICs?
We are meeting about using law and legal mechanisms in all the region, all the Latin America region. During the past four years there have been some good news regarding cancer control, or comprehensive cancer control, laws in El Salvador, Paraguay, Chile and Peru. They already have these cancer control laws. We are, in Mexico, working on one; working together with a group of senators and, it is important to say, from different political parties. It is not a subject or a topic that has to be handled just by one political party. We need to work together with the stakeholders and that is what we are doing in the Latin America region, working with the different parts of the oncology ecosystem or the parts that are interested in the oncology ecosystem.
Anything else you’d like to add?
I believe that this model, these examples of what we are doing in one country, can be replicated in another. It is important to remind that even though we are here in the World Cancer Congress we are here from different countries. We are from different regions, we speak different languages, we have different cultures but we are fighting against the same opponent which is cancer. So the use of law can be replicated in favour of the patients and families in every country in the world. I would like to say thank you for this opportunity to spread, to share, the information and the message. We need to see the fight against cancer as a fight of all of us. It needs all of us.
