A real shock for the European community was the report of the European Commission on Cancer Research (European Groundshot)! “Europe faces a ‘cancer epidemic'”. This is how the headline of the article in the most popular edition of The Guardian, which published excerpts from this important report, begins. Experts also name the reason why this will become possible – the COVID-19 pandemic and all pan-European measures aimed at preventing a pandemic.
The fact is that during the COVID-19 pandemic, many studies in the field of oncology and cancer treatment stopped, the work of oncological services was slowed down. The worst thing is that the built-in system of screening and early diagnosis of cancer was destroyed. In the Lancet Oncology, a specialist oncology publication, experts report: “To emphasize the scale of this problem, we estimate that about 1 million cases of cancer in Europe may have been missed during the COVID-19 pandemic.” The lack of real data, the closure of laboratories, the re-profiling of medical institutions, the suspension of clinical trials have led to the fact that European countries are already detecting cancer in the late stages, when the chances of success in treating a terrible disease, alas, are much lower. In total, according to experts, about 100 million (!!!) examinations were missed, every second patient with cancer did not receive timely surgical intervention or the necessary chemotherapy. Analyzing such facts, the authors of the report thoroughly believe that about a million cases of cancer have not been detected. This situation cannot but cause concern – the European medical system in the field of cancer control, which has been built for decades, and its development can be set back for many years, and in the next ten years, speakers predict a real cancer epidemic! “These issues will ultimately jeopardize survival and contribute to a reduced quality of life for many European cancer patients,” European Groundshot says.
We recall that every year a terrible disease affects up to 20 million people worldwide, and about 12 million people die from this terrible disease every year!
