The first thing I should be responsible is securing the continuity. After the 2011 UN meetings and following that WHO plans on the global oncology issues. UICC put a lot of effort on that; UICC brought generosity, UICC partners, members all together working very hard on that - how can we raise the issue of cancer on the global agenda. We’ve come to that point, now it is time for us to push our member nations to be a part of that global plan. This is my number one responsibility.
And to do that you will work with the WHO and the various governments in the countries where UICC members…?
Definitely. UICC has members around the world in more than 170 countries. We have more than 800 members, this gives us a unique opportunity if we are able to mobilise our members, the governments, and make them work together. That will increase the speed of the work that we are trying to do.
My second priority is I am always asked by my colleagues, by the international paediatric oncology community and others, what are you going to do as a paediatric oncologist in this position? That gives us also a unique opportunity that we have an inequality problem in the paediatric oncology. Although the survival rate is as high as 80-85% in the developed world, it is as low as 10-15% in many parts of the world in low and middle income settings with a global average of 50%. So if I could be able to bring together major stakeholders what we can invest and how UICC can contribute to raise the issue of childhood cancer in acuity that would be a great contribution. That’s my second ambition.
UICC has many opportunities to bring people together. We are organising every two years the World Cancer Conference; we are organising every year the World Cancer Leaders’ Summit. So next year we are going to organise the World Cancer Leaders’ Summit in Istanbul. It is the time for us to push the governments and across border collaboration. So we decided the subject of the next World Cancer Leaders’ Summit as across border collaboration and Istanbul is a perfect location for that because we will get many participants from the European side, former Soviet side, Middle Eastern side, Asia and America. So this is one of the major areas that we could contribute, through the World Cancer Leaders’ Summit to push forwards the actions and put global plans on the NCD side in the other global plans.
The year after next we are having our World Cancer Conference in Paris. Having meetings like we have in Melbourne at the moment, we are raising the bar and it is going well. Different parts of the world we are having different members sharing the knowledge and expertise. I think we should have raised the bar to a higher level in Paris than Melbourne, that should be on the way, because after ASCO, ESMO, ASH, professional societies are getting different than the civil societies. UICC meetings were not like this before; UICC is also transforming and UICC offers a unique opportunity on global cancer politics. So that’s, as I said earlier, after having a meeting at the United Nations in 2011 and after reviewing the plan for the last three years in 2014, which I had a personal opportunity to speak up in the opening plenary, and following those two meetings having the plans done by WHO after discussing with the many stakeholders we have to use those meetings to share the knowledge and expertise. We have been having these meetings since years but this meeting gives us more opportunity at the moment to increase the speed of the action that we are doing.
