ANSAmed
Every year in the 15 countries on the shores of the eastern and southern Mediterranean, 19,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and 212,000 with breast cancer. Of these, 7,800 die of cervical cancer and 62,200 of breast cancer.
A project, reports the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), is being promoted by the Turin Center for Epidemiology and Cancer Prevention to reduce the death toll from these types of tumors in Albania, Morocco and Montenegro.
The four-year project has a 4.16-million-euro budget and its primary aim will be to strengthen monitoring of women at risk of cancer, helping countries to improve protocols to prevent and fight the disease. The project will also serve to improve healthcare services in the three countries, reducing delays in cancer diagnosis and, as a result, the social costs of treatment. The project also calls for providing information to women about healthier lifestyles, the introduction of HPV testing and vaccinations for it.
Over 45,000 disadvantaged women between the ages of 25 and 65 will be tested for cervical and breast cancer and will be informed of risks and the importance of prevention. The project will also include ad hoc training for over 300 professionals of the healthcare sector in the three countries to learn how to conduct screenings in the best possible way.
The project calls for cooperation between healthcare institutes to improve procedures to for cancer prevention and to draw up strategies specific for the different populations, to improve the health of women in the lower and middle classes through the Mediterranean. The Italian health ministry and Paris’s National Cancer Institute contributed funding to the project. (ANSAmed).
