Thanks to tremendous progress in medicine, Cancer is no longer a death sentence. However, cancer survivors need to overcome new challenges in order to resume their quality of life. In particular, discrimination for access to financial services such as mortgages or professional loans is an ordeal.
Four EU countries have adopted a legal framework called the “Right to be Forgotten” and such equal access to financial services should be expanded to all EU cancer survivors. We welcome this priority within the Beating Cancer Plan.
Prof Françoise Meunier, FEAM Vice President
Member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium
On Wednesday (3 February), on the eve of the World Cancer Day, the European Commission presented its Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan.
Structured around four key action areas with 10 flagship initiatives, the Cancer Plan will have an allocation of €4 billion euros.
Prevention, early detection, diagnosis and treatment, and improve quality of life are the four key areas in which the European Commission will focus.
For the FEAM’s Vice President, Professor Françoise Meunier, all these priorities are essential. However, the member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium stressed the importance of improving the quality of life of cancer survivors. This is a topic that the federation has been working on closely, with events such as the annual lecture on “Cancer & Immunotherapy“, held in November 2020.
According to the European Commission, there are about 12 million cancer survivors in the EU.
“Thanks to tremendous progress in medicine, cancer is no longer a death sentence. However, cancer survivors need to overcome new challenges in order to resume their quality of life. In particular, discrimination for access to financial services such as mortgages or professional loans is an ordeal”, Professor Meunier said.
At the moment, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands adopted national laws, recognising a right to be forgotten for cancer survivors, something that is stressed in the Commission’s “Better Life for Cancer Patients Initiative.”
Professor Meunier welcomes this priority within Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, underlining that “equal access to financial services should be expanded to all EU cancer survivors”.
