The European Cancer Patient Coalition strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian armed forces as it is a direct threat to democracy and puts at risk the lives of millions of Ukrainian citizens, including cancer patients and their families. We would also like to show our support to the Ukrainian ECPC Members and ECPC Member organisations in Romania and Poland, who currently try to offer their support with all the available resources they have.

The invasion clearly puts the operation of the Ukrainian health system and supply of medicines and other hospital and particularly cancer patients care in danger. The invasion will have serious consequences for the Ukrainian cancer patients in the near future as well as the longer term.

At ECPC, the largest cancer patient umbrella organisation in Europe, we would like to express our support to our Ukrainian members, refugees and people. It is the time to show solidarity with the people of Ukraine that have been affected by the invasion.

Hospitals and other health care services like diagnostic centers, maternity clinics, etc. should not be attacked and patients’ access to treatment and care with serious life-threatening pathologies should be respected.

Furthermore, we would like to kindly encourage the ECPC Members, cancer patient organisations, healthcare organizations in Europe and beyond to offer any kind of support to the most affected areas within and close to the Ukrainian borders to help the Ukrainian population, as well as the pharmaceutical industry to provide medical supplies and medicines.

The ‘Cancer Survivorship – AI for Well-being’ event from Meeting of Minds 4 Cluster took place on 23rd and 24th of February. This Cluster was initiated at the end of 2020 and it is formed by several EU-funded projects focused on healthcare and well-being. ECPC is currently involved with two EU funded projects, QUALITOP and LifeChamps, contributing from a cancer patient’s perspective. The main aim of this Cluster is helping each other to collect, share, and understand early feedback from end-users on the solutions they are developing.

This past event was an excellent experience to hear all Cluster projects’ work and give life to enticing conversations around eHealth for cancer patients and survivors. Besides this, the EU-funded project CAPABLE is now part of the Cluster.

The online event “Building efficiency in cancer care” took place on 23rd of February. The main aim of this session was to launch a policy blueprint that calls for efficiency in cancer care to be made a top priority worldwide.

This blueprint was created in order to support collaborative policy actions to improve efficiency in cancer care in people-centred and equitable ways. It has been developed based on an international survey involving around 4,000 patients and carers, and it identifies key areas of inefficiency, offers broadly applicable recommendations, and showcases examples of good practices. You can read the full press release here.

All.Can International is a global, non-profit and multi-stakeholder initiative that informs and generates political and public engagement on the need to improve the efficiency of cancer care by focusing on what really matters to patients and the society.

Would you like to take part in an study on COVID-19?

The European Lung Foundation (ELF) has been working on the DRAGON project, a EU-funded project that uses artificial intelligence to better predict the outcome of patients with COVID-19 and be better prepared for future pandemics. DRAGON is currently recruiting for a study on COVID-19. The study is open to anyone who has had a positive COVID-19 test in the past 6 months and would like to share their experience to help researchers understand more about the disease. Participants will have access to an app which will track symptoms, enable researchers to learn more about long-COVID and help future patients better understand what they can expect from their recovery from COVID-19. The app is available in Dutch, English, French and Italian.

You can register through this following link.

Are you a prostate cancer patient? Contribute to this survey to better understand the communication between patients diagnosed with prostate cancer and their treating physician. The results will contribute towards answering part of one of PIONEER’s prioritized research questions and it will only take you 5-10 mins to complete.

This questionnaire is part of the PIONEER project that aims to transform the field of prostate cancer care with particular focus on improving prostate-cancer related outcomes, health system efficiency and the quality of health and social care across Europe.

You can access the survey here.

Eurocarers would like to understand how people view care for older people with support needs and how they assess long-term care systems, more generally. How do people want those close to them or themselves to be looked after, should they need it? What are their experiences with receiving or providing care? And what are their expectations for the future?

For that, they have created this survey in order to collect information on the attitudes, experiences and expectations on long-term care, and to design better support systems for older people with care needs, for their families and communities. 

We would like to invite you to the QUALITOP workshop for cancer patient organizations, an online event that will take place on 15th March 2022.

Researchers and partners of QUALITOP project will be able to give a comprehensive overview of the project and how it can improve the Quality of Life (QoL) of patients. The event is specifically targeted to cancer patients and they will have the opportunity to express their concerns, experiences and give valuable feedback on the project.