"The
greatest risk of getting breast cancer tomorrow is being born today
in a developing country. The greatest risk of not surviving
breast cancer today is being a woman in the Philippines." - Rosa Francia Meneses, 1999 World Conference on Breast Cancer
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The
primary goal of the World Cancer Day on February 4th
is the significant
reduction of death and illness caused by cancer by the year 2025.
Previously set to 2020, the organizers led by the
Union
for International Cancer Control (UICC) will always extend the
deadline because cancer is an incurable disease.
Considering
that UICC was founded 80 years ago when cancer was not yet a
prevalent disease, it would be interesting to know how such an
organization can possibly exist for such a long period and now come
up with a most overarching goal. In the world cancer day's website,
one is even asked to sign up for a “cancer free world!”
During
the 2002 World Conference on Breast Cancer in Victoria, B.C., I was
accosted by a Berkeley Professor for the PBCN handouts which stated
“Stop Breast Cancer!” Short of saying that I was out of my mind,
he categorically stated it will never happen. The global movement for
the eradication of breast cancer, of which the Philippine Breast
Cancer Network is a part of, carries a patient's perspective as
opposed to the medical point of view. In this regard, our advocacy is
much, much bolder than that of the UICC.
The
UICC will never have in its Board of Directors, well respected
doctors
and scientists
who will
not tow
the line of the pharmaceutical industry. Supporters of the UICC
include AMGEN, Roche, Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer,
Bayer, Novartis, Sanofi and MSD. Would anyone ever think that the
UICC would ever bite the hand that feeds it? Rather, it would serve
themselves to nurture a lucrative cancer market!
Early
2012, a cancer stake-holders consultative meeting was held under the
wings of the UICC. Just like the World Cancer Day which sounds and
looks good, it didn't smell nice. They will forever push lifestyle
and pharma but never touch on the environment.Cancer meetings that look good but smell bad!
Even
the Department of Health has no standing program on cancer which is
not even
listed
in its disease surveillance because for the DOH,
cancer not a disease that needs to be seriously addressed. Looking
back, all their past programs on breast cancer have failed miserably
from the time it embarked 20 years ago to reduce the incidence rate
of breast cancer in the country.
Then,
under its Z Benefit Package, PhilHealth announced in 2012 that it
would provide to its members P100,000.00 for the treatment of breast
cancer (stage 0 to IIIA). In reaction to this, I warned PhilHealth of the over diagnosis and over treatment of breast cancer. Yet
now, the Pre-Authorization checklist for breast cancer is no where to
be found in the website of PhilHealth! Was it scrapped just a few
years after it was offered to its members? If so, why?
Patients
are
the major stakeholder and they
must be at the center
of all decision making. Women do not want to have breast cancer yet
they are being led to believe that with early detection, there is a
cure. So are
women being made
to have annual cancer causing mammograms? Prevention is knowing and
avoiding identified environmental carcinogens.
The
World Cancer Declaration's
Target
#
3
states:
"To reduce
exposure to cancer risk factors." If they really mean on having
a world free of cancer, you do not reduce but eliminate known
environmental causes of breast cancer! The incidence rate of breast
cancer worldwide has nearly tripled since 1980 and will certainly be
a "run away train" in the years to come. In our country, 1 in 13 Filipino women will get breast cancer.
One
of the Global
Advocacy Messages states,
“That the success
of early detection programs can be measured by a reduction in the
stage of the cancer at diagnosis with earlier diagnosis associated
with a reduction in the risk of dying
from
cancer."
It
takes 5 to 10 years before the first symptoms of breast cancer are
manifested. How then
can
there ever be early detection? So all women must undergo annual
mammograms year in and year out until one day they are told that they
already have breast cancer? Will all women starting at age of puberty
be periodically screened for breast cancer? Will women with early
diagnosis, even of
the
non-invasive type be made to lose their breasts and
later submit to chemotherapy just to supposedly
make
sure she is said to be cancer-free and cured? How I wish it were as
simple as that!
And
now, the Philippine Medical Association
(PMA) is calling for the return of local public hospitals and health
centers to the control of the Department of Health (DOH) because
local government units (LGUs) have failed to adequately provide
quality health services to the people. The shortage of 930,000
doctors was even cited. Unfortunately, as I had earlier shown, the
DOH can not or will not truly act on the cancer epidemic, except to
banner pink ribbons and support pharmaceutical initiatives. The
solution lies not in having so many doctors but in having lesser
patients!
Yes, the World Cancer Day is one huge marketing event of
the cancer industry – just like the breast cancer month every
October. I
would like to refer to a
parable about saving babies from drowning in a river. All heroic
efforts
were focused downstream until one asked "who’s
throwing all of these babies into the river in the first place!"
To truly end breast cancer, we must look upstream and stop the cause.
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