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Fighting Cancer. On the Cusp of the Federal Project’s One-Year Anniversary

13 December 2019

A roundtable was held in the Russian State Duma in Moscow on the results of the first year of the federal project ‘Fighting Cancer’. The event was organized by the Roscongress Foundation, the State Duma’s Health Protection Committee, and the Federation Council’s Social Policy Committee with the support of the Content Foundation for Expert and Analytical Activities. Representatives of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Health, the Federal Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund, public organizations, leading industry experts as well as the executive authorities from more than 25 regions took part in the discussion.

Meeting participants discussed cancer programme interim results and identified priorities for the coming year that include the organization of a network of outpatient cancer care centres, the creation of reference centres, an upgrade to the network of regional and federal oncology centres, and the introduction of clinical guidelines and treatment protocols for cancer patients.

Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Healthcare Dmitry Morozov (United Russia) emphasized that only a joint effort would be able to fulfil the tasks. “There are two degrees of acceptance for any goods acceptance on the part of specialists and acceptance by regular people. Our ‘technical control department’ is people. For the right measures, we must rely firstly on social diagnostics and secondly on our medical community”, he said.

The round table was moderated by Chairman of the Subcommittee on Medicines Circulation, Pharmaceutical and Medical Industry Development Alexander Petrov (United Russia). “The Ministry of Health is doing monumental work to implement the Federal project. It won’t be possible to fully assess the results for decades, as has been the case with cancer programmes in other countries. To achieve project goals, special attention should be paid to the fight against the types of cancer contributing most to the loss of life expectancy in the Russian Federation by developing additions to federal and regional projects”, Petrov said.

Deputy Minister of Healthcare of the Russian Federation Evgeny Kamkin noted in his speech that the Fighting Oncological Diseases federal project was one of the most ambitious and resource-intensive projects implemented under the Healthcare national project in terms of objectives and scale. “The project aims to improve the quality of medical care received by cancer patients and reduce mortality from malignant tumours. A whole range of measures affecting the cancer service and the entire healthcare system as a whole is being implemented. Every constituent entity of the Russian Federation is involved in the project, and federal medical organizations will join the programme in 2020”, Kamkin said.

Head of the Healthy Life project and First Deputy Director for Development of the Roscongress Foundation Anastasia Stolkova noted that the fight against cancer was a priority at key healthcare discussion platforms: “The Content Foundation for the Development of Expert and Analytical Activity and the expert community have been conducting a series of events dedicated to the implementation of the federal project to fight cancer since May of this year. The resolution adopted at the end of today’s round table will serve as the foundation for the final event of this cycle – a specialized cancer session as part of the business programme of the Healthy Life Forum. The Forum will take place on 12 February 2020 on the first day of the Russian Investment Forum”.

One of the issues or particular concern to the medical and patient communities is the lack of measures in the federal project ‘Fighting Cancer’ to reduce mortality from malignant tumours of lymphoid and hematopoietic tissues. At the roundtable, we looked at the issue of drafting supplements for the federal project ‘Fighting Cancer’ in order to introduce additional targets in the creation, implementation, and evaluation of the effectiveness of the project taking into account the differences in morbidity and mortality from various types of cancer as well as further steps to improve the system used to ensure medical care for priority diseases and provide patients who have malignant tumours of lymphoid and hematopoietic tissues with full access to modern treatment methods.

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