UICC World Cancer Congress 2006

One year ago, the 58th World Health Assembly accepted a resolution urging Member States among other things to: „« "to collaborate with the Organization in developing and reinforcing comprehensive cancer control programmes tailored to the socioeconomic context, ......." „« "to set priorities based on national burden of cancer, resource availability and health system capacity for cancer prevention, control and palliative-care programmes" „« " to integrate national cancer-control programmes in existing health systems ........."

Although this resolution is of historical importance, this by no means will ensure that most governments will comply with what has been adopted by their representatives on 25 May 2005 in Geneva.

The example of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is in that sense somewhat sobering: it has recently been shown, that tobacco lobbies have succeeded in blocking the requested national legislation in most developing countries (1). One of the main possibilities to put pressure on governments in order to act according to the WHO resolution is to mount a public pressure in each country and in that sense NGOs probably are the most important resource in order to mobilize civil society. This is the very reason why recently the Executive Committee of UICC has declared that the main task of the Union is to make sure that in 10 years most countries of this world will have a cancer control plan. Although UICC has recently published an handbook suggesting strategies for NGOs for an evidence-based cancer prevention (2), there is no mention to limit its activity just to formulating guidelines.

In order to be able to directly participate to the mobilization of the civil society, UICC: 1. has recently decided to establish national-regional offices/spokes, where the first will being just now started in Mumbai and Bangkok; 2. has recently launched with the partial support of NCI and Sanofi-Aventis a wide-ranging programme called "My child matters", whereby for the first year 14 projects in the field of pediatric oncology were started in 10 developing countries. Next year further projects should be started in at least 6 other countries (3); 3. the intention to very actively cooperate with IAEA for the development of the Programme of Action for Cancer Therapy (PACT).

Many of these activities are based on the so-called "twinning model" (4), which has recently been shown to be the most successful approach for the solution of the problems arising in developing countries in the field of pediatric oncology (5). Moreover this model might by suitable also in adults. Based on its personal experience in Nicaragua (6), the author will describe how cancer control projects can succeed or fail in developing countries and which are the best models to ensure a cooperation between governments and NGOs.

References: 1. The Tobacco industry in developing countries has forestalled legislation on tobacco control (editorial). BMJ 332:313-314; 2006 2. Evidence-based cancer prevention: Strategies for NGOs. A UICC-handbook. UICC 2004, Geneva 3. The UICC My child matters initiative awards: combating cancer in children in the developing world (Newsdesk). The Lancet Oncology 7:13-14; 2006 4. Masera G, Baez F, Biondi A, Cavalli F et al. North-south twinning in paediatric haemato-oncology: the La Mascota programme, Nicaragua. Lancet 352:1923-1926;1998 5. Ribeiro RC, Pui CH. Saving the children - Improving Childhood Cancer Treatment in Developing Countries. NEJM 352:2158;2005 6. Cavalli F. Transfer of Medical Technologies to Developing Countries: Nicaragua - Success and failure. in Cancer in Developing Countries: the great challenge for oncology in 21st century. Tanneberger S, Cavalli F and Pannuti F (eds.) Zuckschwerdt Verlag, Germering/Munich; 2004