Mexico, .- Putting in the public eye the issue of cancer, a disease that in 2020 is predicted to affect 1 in 3 people, is a priority to prevent patients continue to arrive in advanced stages of treatment, said this Sunday Efe an expert.
For Adela Ayensa, director of the Salvati Foundation, an organization that helps patients with all types of cancer, in Mexico it has failed to promote campaigns for the timely detection of this disease and to follow up on those that already exist.
“When mobile campaigns are made to detect breast cancer, the lack of success lies in the fact that the patient is no longer followed in. If something goes wrong and they do not locate it, there are no human and budgetary resources to reach it”, lament.
Although cases such as the recent death of actress Edith González due to ovarian cancer that she suffered since 2016 tend to turn people’s attention to this disease, Ayensa considers that the duration of the impact is very short, and therefore, ineffective.
“When she announced that she had cancer, she started talking about important ovarian cancer for the first time, and that interest will surely grow again, but it will last very little and we do not want that to happen,” she said.
He explained that in Mexico, patients with this disease usually come to attention at very late stages.
“There are several types of cancer that could reduce their risks, such as prostate cancer, cervical cancer, and breast cancer, but the population is still not aware, which is very serious,” Ayensa said.
He explained that cancer if detected in a timely manner has ample possibilities of being cured “the cure is practically immediate and very little invasive,” he said.
However, in cases such as prostate cancer there are still many prejudices and myths in men, which has affected the percentage of men dying from this cause is greater than the death of women due to breast cancer, for example .
“There is a problem of education, we usually go to the doctor when something hurts and the problem of many types of cancer is that they do not hurt,” he said.
Women, he said, were “educated to feel shame for our body”, which leads to no knowledge of it and is complicated, for example, detect abnormalities in the breasts.
“The knowledge of the body, looking naked, should be something natural and women should know how to self-explore from age 12, but it does not happen,” he said.
In addition, he said, there is also a knowledge gap in doctors who have the first contact with patients, which “should be well prepared, since often a leukemia can be diagnosed as anemia,” he lamented.
Coupled with this, in Mexico, inequality in the health system has led to the survival possibilities of patients depending on the organism to which they are enrolled.
“There is no standardization of medicines, treatments and that affects the survival of patients, and there are no palliative care policies,” he said.
Due to this panorama, Fundación Salvati together with 56 other organizations created the Together Against Cancer movement, which has the support of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Union Against Cancer.
The organization seeks to promote public policies that help fight this disease in the country.
“We are promoting a National Cancer Plan, which is necessary to meet all the needs that surround this problem,” he said.
He indicated that in addition to the organizations more than 200 patients are involved who have understood that “health is their right and not a gratuity”.
Ayensa says that, nevertheless, Mexico has made great progress thanks to the creation of the National Cancer Registry, which already presented its first results this year.
“It was very necessary, with him we can have an overview of how the situation is in the country, by states, genres, it is very important for the authorities to take action,” he said.
In Mexico, cancer is the third cause of death. Only in 2013, according to figures from the National Cancer Institute (INCAN), 195,925 new cases were detected and 84,172 deaths were caused.
According to estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO), the incidence of cancer worldwide could increase by 50% by the year 2030. (EFE)
