A national vision for combatting the scourge of cancer and its victims of geography who receive unequal care will move a step closer Friday when the Prime Minister announces the government is getting out of the business.
The Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control aims to do what nothing else in this country ever has: reduce the burden of cancer by preventing disease, detecting it early and ensuring those stricken by it receive the best possible care, regardless of where they live.
On Friday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and federal Health Minister Tony Clement will announce in a Montreal hospital that the strategy will become a non-profit, arm's-length agency, The Globe and Mail has learned.
By doing that, the federal government will effectively erase the suspicions of cancer doctors, administrators, advocates and patients alike who are worried that big government would mire the strategy in bureaucracy and doom it to failure.
“In the cancer community, this is like a new bill of rights,” said Pat Kelly, national program director of the Campaign to Control Cancer, a coalition of 55 of Canada's leading cancer organizations.
Though Ms. Kelly, a breast-cancer survivor, did not know the details of today's announcement, she has worked for many years lobbying for a cancer-control strategy. She said it will be a good thing, too, because the federal government has been “missing in action in the war on cancer.”
She anticipated today's announcement would be the cancer equivalent to the Martin Luther King “I have a dream” speech.
The new strategy, which has a $260-million budget for five years, will operate at arm's length from the federal government but report each year to the federal Health Ministry.
It also comes in the midst of a Globe and Mail special project on cancer, which has catalogued the human toll of the disease and magnified the inadequacies of the health-care system.
Those deficiencies include unequal access to cancer drugs and PET technology, and the failure of hospitals to meet health-accord benchmarks by radiating patients within four weeks.
After the stories were published, the Tory government was twice taken to task in the House of Commons, with the opposition charging this week that cancer patients are taking out loans, racking up credit-card debt and facing financial ruin in an effort to pay for their treatment. The Conservatives were also accused of dropping the ball on waiting times; the series revealed how only 50 to 60 per cent of hospitals are meeting the health-accord standard of radiating cancer patients within four weeks.
Friday's announcement will go far to placate cancer administrators, providers, advocates and patients who felt, at times, that they were in the trenches, fighting the war on cancer with little ammunition.
A chair and vice-chair of the new non-profit organization is to be announced today. One source likened its independence to that of the Canadian Institute for Health Information, a not-for-profit organization that provides essential data and analysis on Canada's health system.
The Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control board will comprise roughly 15 members drawn from cancer groups, provincial cancer agencies, survivor groups, the federal government and at least one native organization. The provinces are expected to have one-third of the board seats.
Through an agreement with Health Canada, it will also receive research funds that it will allocate, making for some tough, if not contentious, choices on research priorities. If implemented, the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control could prevent over the next three decades at least 1.2 million Canadians from developing cancer and save 420,000 lives and more than $39-billion in direct health-care costs, according to the Canadian Cancer Society website.
The National Health Service in Britain embraced such a strategy in 2000, after its incidence and death rates for cancer were seen to be high for a developed nation. Key to the British plan was that by 2005, no patient would wait longer than 62 days from urgent general-practitioner referral to first treatment, or longer than 31 days from diagnosis to first treatment. A report released last month showed 93.5 per cent of referrals were seen within the time limit.
In Canada, experts say the move is long overdue.
On Thursday night, Barry Stein, president of the Colorectal Cancer Association of Canada, said he did not know the details of the announcement but that such a strategy would be “good news for all cancer patients” as it would allow for “better application of current knowledge, especially through primary prevention and early detection.”
He has long been pushing for a colorectal-cancer screening program, which could reduce death rates from the disease, but so far, no province has announced one. Such a screening program would be seen to be key for the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control.
Whatever the case, all agree something has to be done.
Cancer's toll is significant: An estimated 153,100 Canadians will be diagnosed with cancer this year and 70,400 will die of it, according to Canadian Cancer Society figures.
According to Ms. Kelly, when the new strategy is implemented, “everyone will know what excellence in cancer care looks like.”
