# Outline of the Basic Plan to Promote Cancer Control Programs

## Purpose

The Basic Plan to Promote Cancer Control Programs (hereinafter referred to as the "Basic Plan") was formulated by the government in accordance with the Cancer Control Act (Act No. 98 of 2006) of June 2007, with cancer measures then having been promoted in accordance with that Basic Plan. Five years have passed since the former Basic Plan was formulated and new issues identified. The Basic Plan has therefore been reviewed to clarify the basic direction that promoting cancer measures should take in order to comprehensively and systematically promote cancer measures over the new five-year period of FY2012 through to 2016. The Basic Plan aims to create "a society in which all people, including cancer patients, understand cancer, and can face and withstand it" through these measures.

## 1 Basic policies

○ Implementing cancer measures from the viewpoint of the people, including cancer patients

○ Implementing comprehensive and systematic cancer measures that involve priority issues

☐ Ideas involving the goals and achievement time

## 2 Priority issues

1. Further improvement of radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and surgical therapy, and the development of pertinent specialist medical professionals

Development of medical professionals that have specialized in medical cancer care and the promotion of team medical care in thereby improving the quality of radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and surgical therapy, and multidisciplinary therapy that combines the aforementioned therapies.

2. Promotion of palliative care from when first diagnosed with cancer

Further improving the palliative care system in thereby enabling patients and their families to receive holistic palliative care, including mental health care for psychological pain, when they are first diagnosed with cancer through training medical professionals who engage in medical cancer care and reinforcement of the functions of palliative care teams, etc.

### 3. Promotion of cancer registry

The cancer registry involves a system to use in obtaining data that will be the basis of cancer measures through collecting and analyzing data on the number of patients with each type of cancer, the content of their treatment, and survival time, etc. Its development, however, is still lagging behind when compared to various foreign countries. Efforts will therefore be made to develop a system to use in smoothly promoting a cancer registry, including discussing its legal establishment.

4. (New) Improved cancer measures for the working generations and children

Promoting measures for female cancer, which has a high mortality rate in Japan, responses to employment issues, raising the percentage of working generations receiving cancer screening, and measures for childhood cancer, etc.

The various types of pain that cancer patients suffer

## 3 Overall goals (10 year goals from FY2007)

1. Decreasing the number of deaths from cancer (20% decrease in the age-adjusted mortality rate of those younger than 75)

2. Reducing the pain of all cancer patients and their families, and maintaining or improving the quality of their recuperation

3. (New) Establishing a society in which people can live with a sense of security, even though they have cancer

Changes in the age-adjusted mortality rate (younger than 75) (per population of 100,000)