While nearly 468,000 new cancers were diagnosed in France last year, President Emmanuel Macron unveils this Thursday, World Cancer Day, the priorities for the next ten years in the fight against this disease which covers so many forms and of realities.
"The ambition is to go faster [...], building on what has been acquired by previous plans", while making "bends", we assure at the Elysee, so that cancer still kills around 150,000 per year in France, the leading cause of death for men and the second for women.
In the morning, the Head of State will visit the Gustave Roussy Institute, in Villejuif, within the onco-pediatrics department and the treatment research department, within the research laboratory specializing in immunotherapy, one of the most promising treatment options.
After three plans to fight cancer of five years each, this time it is a “ten-year strategy” that will be announced, to “give visibility” to all stakeholders, the palace further explained.
40% of cancer cases could be avoided
A first roadmap has been established for the period 2021-2025, it will have a budget of € 1.74 billion from the State and Social Security, ie "an increase of 20% compared to to the financing of the previous plan ”, which was endowed with approximately € 1.5 billion, underlines the Elysée.
The Cancer Institute (INCa) will have to act on four “priority axes”: improve prevention, reduce the sequelae linked to the disease, better fight against cancers with “poor prognosis” and reduce inequalities, particularly in access to innovations.
For prevention, it is estimated that 40% of cancer cases could be avoided, because they are attributable to modifiable risk factors such as tobacco, diet, UV exposure or sedentary lifestyle.
153,000 are diagnosed per year;
the government and INCa aim to reduce this number by 60,000 by 2040. "The objective of this strategy is clearly to significantly reduce the number of patients who will develop cancer and those who will die from the disease" , explained in our newspaper last September the president of INCa, Professor Norbert Ifrah.
Ten million annual screenings in 2025
For this, it is necessary to detect cancers at the stage where they are curable, and therefore to strengthen the screening.
To meet the target of 10 million annual screenings by 2025, and no longer 9, it will be necessary to get more patients to participate in screening campaigns for breast cancer, cervix and colorectal cancer, in which participate only 30% of the public concerned and which contrary to what one thinks, is not only a male cancer.
Research is also being carried out to consider screening for other cancers, such as lung cancer.
Morning essentials newsletter
A tour of the news to start the day
Subscribe to the newsletterAll newsletters
In addition, once treated, two-thirds of patients still have sequelae of the disease or its treatments and, disabling for 44% of them five years after their diagnosis.
Mutilating surgeries, side effects of drugs, developmental delays in children, hearing, dental, joint problems, memory loss… The goal is to halve this suffering.
READ ALSO>
Cancer: "I am standing but the fight continues", explains a former patient
The last objective, and not the least, is to "significantly improve" the survival rate of cancers with a poor prognosis, pancreatic and lung cancers, certain so-called "triple negative" breast cancers or even a rare cancer, glioblastoma. of the child's brainstem.
Currently their five-year survival rate is less than one in three patients.
The 3rd cancer plan, which covered the period 2014-2019 and was extended in 2020, “allowed major advances” in research, access to innovative therapies, pediatric cancer treatment and even smoking prevention. , but "singularly lacked ambition in the fight against alcohol", responsible for 16,000 cancer deaths per year, pointed out the assessment report drawn up in October by the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (Igas) and the IGESR (for the Ministries of Education, Sport and Research).
France is still the sixth country that drinks the most among the 34 of the OECD, with large regional disparities.
The executive aims to truly act on alcoholism, an extremely sensitive subject in France where the notion of alcohol dependence is the subject of a lot of modesty and embarrassment and where non-drinkers can testify to social pressure which is exerted on them.
By limiting access to minors, tomorrow's drinkers and sometimes heavy drinkers, by strengthening information and even by further regulating advertising.
At the end of 2019, a study revealed that 86% of 17-year-olds remembered an advertisement for an alcoholic drink.
VIDEO. Beers at 14 ° alcohol: "It's a formidable trap set for young people"