Europa Uomo joins with other organisations to highlight unmet needs

An expert group including Europa Uomo has told EU policy makers that there are considerable unmet needs in prostate cancer treatment, and called on them to increase awareness of the challenges that men with prostate cancer face.

In a Call to Action for the 2019-24 EU legislative period, the Let’s Talk Prostate Cancer campaign’s Expert Group, chaired by Member of the European Parliament, Tiemo Wölken, has issued five challenges for European politicians, asking them to:

• become ambassadors of awareness campaigns at EU, national, and regional level to increase knowledge of the challenges prostate cancer patients face;
• ensure that prostate cancer is included in national cancer plans;
• support research into the socio-economic, ethnic, national, and regional inequalities that affect men with prostate cancer;
• work to improve timely access to high-quality multidisciplinary and multi-professional prostate cancer services at every stage of treatment and care;
• work to ensure that health services are organised so that multidisciplinary teams can provided effective diagnosis and treatment.

Let’s Talk Prostate Cancer is a pan-European initiative – organised and funded by Astellas Pharma Europe Ltd – bringing together representatives of stakeholder organisations from the EU prostate cancer community. Its members include Europa Uomo, the European Association of Urology, the European Oncology Nursing Society, the European Cancer Patient Coalition, and the European Association of Urology Nurses.

“The publication of Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan and renewed focus on EU health policy as a result of the pandemic are a unique opportunity for us to raise these concerns, and we want to ensure that prostate cancer is not left behind in efforts to build a true European Health Union,” wrote Tiemo Wölken in his Foreword.

André Deschamps, Chairman of Europa Uomo, said: “As one of the main voices for people affected by prostate cancer in Europe, Europa Uomo strives to increase awareness of prostate cancer and promotes equality of care. Quality of life should be a major driver in decision making. We are delighted to be a member of this multi-stakeholder initiative and to contribute to making access to optimal care and treatment for people with prostate cancer in Europe a reality.”

The full Call to Action can be found here. In addition, the Expert Group published an analysis comparing political prioritisation of prostate cancer and breast cancer across Europe between January 2015 and January 2020, which can be read here.