Public health in the EU: encouraging developments in the area of national cancer screening programmes
09. 02. 2017 | IARC Press ReleaseThe implementation report on the 2003 Council Recommendation on cancer screening, published today [1], reveals a steep rise in national screening programmes for breast, cervical and colorectal cancer.
Image: ec.europa.eu
Vytenis Andriukaitis, Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, said “Breast, cervical and colorectal cancer claim the lives of around a quarter of a million European citizens each year. Early detection - as well as cancer prevention - saves lives, and so this is where we must continue focusing our efforts. The Council’s recommendation and the Commission’s quality assurance guidelines have led to most EU countries putting in place organised, high quality screening programmes. This is a major step forward for citizens’ health.” [2–5]
Today, 25 EU countries have population-based programmes for breast cancer, 22 for cervical cancer and 20 for colorectal cancer screening, as compared with 18, 17 and 12, respectively, since the first report was published 10 years ago.
Nearly 25 million women aged 50-69 years were invited to mammography screening in the last reporting year, and 110 million men and women aged 50-74 years could potentially undergo screening for colorectal cancer.
In addition to highlighting the status and volume of screening programmes in EU countries, today’s report includes a set of essential indicators to document the quality of screening.
Read the full report.
Editor’s note
Population-based screening programmes for breast cancer, cervical cancer and colorectal cancer are available in the Czech Republic. More information about individual cancer screening programmes is available at www.mamo.cz (breast cancer screening), www.kolorektum.cz (colorectal cancer screening), and www.cervix.cz (cervical cancer screening).
Reference
- International Agency for Research on Cancer: Cancer Screening in the European Union: Report on the implementation of the Council Recommendation on cancer screening. Lyon (France) 2017.
- Council Recommendation of 2 December 2003 on cancer screening
- European Guidelines for Quality Assurance in Breast Cancer Screening and Diagnosis, 4th Edition. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2006.
- European Guidelines for Quality Assurance in Cervical Cancer Screening, 2nd Edition. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2008.
- European Guidelines for Quality Assurance in Colorectal Cancer Screening and Diagnosis, 1st Edition. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2010.
- European Commission: Cancer Screening
- International Agency for Research on Cancer
klíčová slova: breast cancer screening, cervical cancer screening, colorectal cancer screening, European Union
