The Queen calls for more resources for cancer prevention

Queen Letizia has made an appeal this Thursday to “really” provide more resources to the fight against cancer, and has asked for “public and private” commitments in the fight against the disease. She did so on the eve of the celebration of World Cancer Day on February 4, at the presentation of the Todos contra el Cáncer campaign.

The initiative, promoted by the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC) of which Doña Letizia is honorary president, seeks to mobilize and raise awareness in society “to add resources and capacities around a great action program for knowledge, prevention, research and treatment” of a disease that constitutes, in the words of the AECC, “the most important socio-sanitary problem in the world”.

The goal of Todos Contra el Cáncer is to increase the cancer survival rate to 70% by 2030. The campaign has been declared by the Government -represented on the spot by the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias- an event of exceptional public interest, a category that promotes collaboration between the public and private spheres to carry out large projects through a model of fiscal patronage.

The Queen recalled that “cancer is a very complex royal priority” and stressed the importance of preventing it. “Prevention has to do with the conscious decisions that we make in our day to day and in our way of life according to the knowledge we have. Therefore, the greater the knowledge of health, the better decisions we will make ”, she defended at a breakfast held at the Royal Tapestry Factory in Madrid, which was attended by some 150 guests, including representatives of political parties, companies and scientific societies. Doña Letizia has highlighted the need to provide “really with sufficient resources for prevention.” She has called for improvements to “patient care in all dimensions” and has stressed the importance of palliative care being implemented “in a comprehensive and equitable manner.”

In Spain, according to AECC calculations, a person is diagnosed with cancer every two minutes. One in two men and one in three women will have the disease in their lifetime. For this reason, the president of the entity, Ramón Reyes, has highlighted the need to promote “maximum” research and investment in prevention, early detection and patient care. Reyes has designated tobacco as “the enemy number one of health” in Spain, a country that has been referred to as “the tobacconist of Europe”, and has asked the parties to approve an anti-smoking law with tougher measures.

Reyes has warned that cancer is already “an epidemic”, and has highlighted the need to act on the crisis that primary care is going through, which constitutes the “entrance door” for the sick.