Europa Uomo conveys key messages at European Commission’s flagship innovation event

Taboos around prostate cancer need to be broken if early detection programmes are to succeed. This was the message of former Europa Uomo Chairman, André Deschamps, speaking at a European Research and Innovation Days event discussing how research can be integrated into new cancer screening programmes.

The event, organised by the EU Commission’s Research and Innovation directorate, was held just days after the commission announced that its recommended screening programmes would be extended to include prostate, lung and gastric cancer.

André Deschamps (pictured seated right being interviewed at the event) said it was essential to confront the fact that men found it difficult to talk about their prostates, and that awareness and understanding needs to be built among populations.

European governments, he said, should be motivated to improve awareness and early detection by economics, if nothing else: “Health care costs should tell them something, because if you are diagnosed at the metastatic phase, your treatment cost is about €50,000, but if you can treat at an early stage the cost is about €5,000. Also, if you treat at an early stage, there is a positive effect on quality of life: our EUPROMS studies have shown that once you are in a metastatic phase, your quality of life goes down.”

He said that in order to assure the best quality of life for prostate cancer patients, treatment needed to be performed in multidisciplinary cancer centres.

“Finally, for the men that need to be treated, a programme of aftercare should be installed so that negative effects of the treatment can be minimised,” he said.

You can find more information about the session on the European Commission’s European Research and Innovation Day website