This year, World Cancer Day is launching #CloseTheCareGap, a three-year campaign aiming to promote awareness, collaboration, and action for a more equitable future in cancer care.
ESMO has always been at the forefront of the fight against cancer on a global level. For this reason, also this year ESMO is supporting World Cancer Day (WCD), the global initiative taking place on 4 February, led by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC).
The reality today is that who you are and where you live could mean the difference between life and death. It’s not fair. But we can change this.
“ESMO is painfully aware of the cancer care gap” said Solange Peters, ESMO President, “for many years the Society has been working relentlessly to help close it, by providing healthcare professionals and institutions alike with the knowledge, skills, and tools necessary to address health inequities and reduce the global impact of cancer”.
Even today, inequities in treatment, diagnosis, outcome, and support are a daily occurrence, in high- as well as in middle- and low- income countries. Barriers - such as cultural contexts, geographical location, gender norms, income, education levels, and discrimination based on age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability, and lifestyle - can prevent access to quality cancer care, and leading to wide discrepancies in the risk of developing and surviving cancer.
To recognise the obstacles that stands in the way of quality cancer care for all, ESMO is keeping on developing and widen the range of initiatives dedicated to address unmet needs, increase accessibility to cancer care and support specific communities.
Visit the ESMO for World Cancer Day 2022 page and read more about how the Society has been working to raise awareness of inequalities in cancer care, thus contributing to #CloseTheCareGap.