Cancer: Macron aims for first 'generation without tobacco'

(ANSA) - PARIS, 04 FEB - Strengthening the prevention of smoking and excess alcohol, aiming at the advent of a future "generation without tobacco": this is the goal announced today by French President Emmanuel Macron, presenting his ten-year anti -cancer, with the aim of reducing the number of deaths from the current 150,000 per year to 100,000.

Smoking and alcohol are therefore at the heart of the French strategy against cancer.

    "I hope that the generation that will be 20 years old in 2030 will be the first generation without tobacco in recent history," Macron declared, confirming a promise made during the presidential campaign that led him to the Elysee in 2017.

Therefore the commitment to act on the "price, the extension of tobacco-free spaces, the information campaigns on its toxicity" as well as better assistance to those who stop smoking.

For Macron, mobilization must start "at school".

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic - with 77,000 deaths in France alone - the head of state has announced a 20% increase in anti-cancer means.

A scourge that beyond the Alps remains the first cause of mortality among men, the second among women.

    The budget for the first five years of the ten-year plan will thus be raised to 1.7 billion euros for the period 2021-2025.

   Macron is today on a visit to the Institut Gustave Roussy in Villejuif, one of the most famous anti-cancer centers in Europe at the doors of Paris, where many Italians have also gone to be insured, to meet medical staff and patients, on the occasion of the World Day against cancer 2021. (ANSA).