Cancer is a health problem in Peru as it is all over the world. It is a growing problem, it is the second cause of death and we have decided to act against cancer using prevention as the only way to solve this problem. In our country we are involved in a very important educational programme, not only to health professionals but also to the public in general. We believe the press has an important part, an important role, in this fight against cancer and we are having the help of the press in general because they are delivering the message that cancer is a chronic disease and it is the most curable of the chronic diseases. So it is helping us to under-stage the patients, get them early for treatment.
The other part of the story is that we are teaching the public in general about the possibilities of an early diagnosis but we are working in parallel to offer the possibilities of treatment. It is a problem if you tell them what you should do but then they don’t have any possibility of accessing a place where they will get the professional specialised treatment. We have a lack of radiotherapy in our country, it is almost all concentrated in our capital, Lima, and two or three radiation machines outside Lima. One is working full, the other two are working partially which is a big problem. 70%, because of the advanced stages of most cancers, would need radiation therapy and it is not accessible to the majority of the country.
What can you tell us about the incidence of cancer? As is well known, cervical cancer is one of the most common types of cancer in Latin America, how is it in Peru?
In our country in women’s cancer cervical cancer is probably, and I’m saying probably, still the number one followed very near by breast cancer which is increasing. We have poor statistics at a national level but if we see the cancer registry for Lima and Callao that covers ten million population we will see that breast cancer is the number one cancer in women now. It is a big changebecause there has been a very high decline in cervical cancer, our incidence was over 40 per 100,000; it’s now only 19. Not only it’s still high but it is coming down so it means that cancer education, the access for Pap smear and the management of early lesions is giving results.
Very good. And how does the Peru Health Department benefit from coming to international conferences like the NCID that we are in today?
You always learn from people that are working in different areas. Our countries are very varied because we have different health status, we have different nutritional status, we have different cultural status. Our countries are a very varied mixture of education and access to services. So it is good to hear what is going on in Africa or in Europe or in other places. You learn a lot from it and exchange experiences and from it you can get the good ideas to go forward.
