Voices
Breast cancer surgery should be a job for certified specialists – an appeal
Many women, knowing they need surgery for breast cancer, are afraid of looking disfigured after their operation. The question, on day one, is how and where to find a specialist…
From the New Yorker: What Cancer Takes Away
When I got sick, I warned my friends: Don’t try to make me stop thinking about death. Before I got sick, I’d been making plans for a place for public…
A 360° approach to a 360° problem: why a mission is the right approach to solving cancer
Medical researcher Bettina Ryll learned about the gap between how research is done and what patients need when her husband was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma in 2011. She set up…
Workload doubled, resources halved: cancer patient groups need help to survive the pandemic
COVID-19 is creating significant challenges for millions of cancer patients around the world, including delays in diagnosis and treatment ‒ all made worse by an underlying concern about the essential…
COVID-19 is delaying diagnosis, but getting back to normal is not what we need
Across the globe, all human and technical resources in healthcare are currently focused on dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, which is having an impact on other areas of healthcare. At…
Telling stories about cancer ‒ six award-winning journalists show how it’s done
We often talk about the need to break down ‘silos’ in cancer care – to view treatment, care and research holistically, collaborating around patient needs. Who would have thought that…
EORTC pushes for the State of Science in Care
Covid-19 has taught us that we need to think differently about many issues. One of the most important, in my view, is that we need to be ready to act…
Cancer nursing, COVID-19 and healthcare inequality
This year European Cancer Nursing Day ECND2020 on 18 May will be special because this is the World Health Organisation’s Year of the Nurse and Midwife; but also because it…
Delivering cancer care during the pandemic in Europe’s most overstretched health system
In a 2016 Voices post, Geta Roman wrote about the daily struggle to deliver timely and high-quality diagnostics and care in a health system with a per capita healthcare expenditure…
COVID – are cancer patients being protected?
This is a particularly worrying time for people going through chemotherapy and other treatments that suppress the immune system. So what advice is being offered by oncology departments and what…