Print
See related documents
Resolution 2021 (2014) Final version
Towards optimum breast cancer services across Europe
1. Breast cancer is still the most
common cancer among European women and has the highest mortality rate
of any cancer among women, despite significant scientific advances
in detection and treatment in the last 20 to 25 years.
2. Progress in fighting breast cancer – and the stigma still
attached to the condition in some countries – has neither been linear
nor universal across Europe, for many reasons. Access to quality
screening programmes and modern treatment is not yet understood
as a right throughout Europe, resulting in many women being subjected
to unnecessary mutilating surgery and/or aggressive treatment.
3. Providing breast cancer services and care of guaranteed quality
leads in the medium and long term to improved survival rates, to
savings for the health-care system and to a better quality of life
for patients. Placing the fight against breast cancer at the top
of member countries' health agendas is thus not only in the interest of
the individual patient.
4. The Parliamentary Assembly therefore recommends that Council
of Europe member States:
4.1. place
the fight against breast cancer at the top of their health agendas;
4.2. ensure that women have access to quality-controlled breast
cancer screening programmes organised on a national level and set
up in accordance with European guidelines, as well as to accurate, evidence-based
information on the potential benefits and risks of participating
in them, so that they can make an informed decision on their participation;
4.3. ensure that all breast cancer patients have effective
access, wherever their place of residence, to quality-assured diagnosis
and treatment in multidisciplinary breast units, which work in co-operation with
the national screening programmes set up in accordance with European
guidelines and which encourage shared decision making between patients
and medical teams;
4.4. establish and maintain national cancer registries providing
reliable data on the situation in the member States and task the
registries with, inter alia,
informing and raising awareness among the media and the general
public of the proper interpretation of this data;
4.5. outlaw any discrimination against breast cancer patients
on the basis of their disease status, in particular with regard
to employment and insurance;
4.6. encourage researchers in all Council of Europe member
and observer States to work together to further the understanding
of the disease and to improve screening, diagnosis and treatment
techniques in order to reduce mortality rates, improve the quality
of life of individual patients, reduce overdiagnosis and overtreatment
and, ultimately, find a cure for breast cancer.