WRITTEN QUESTION E-0784/02

by Brice Hortefeux (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(20 March 2002)

Subject: Cancer screening

As the Commission is surely aware, women account for more than half the world's population. In the European Union, one in every eight women contracts breast cancer. According to a recent WHO statement, every seven minutes a woman dies of this disease in the EU and breast cancer is the main cause of mortality among women between the ages of 35 and 55.

Against this background, it is unacceptable that women patients should have access to varying standards of care within the EU. The problem is not dependent on costs but on the way in which medical care is organised. It is therefore important to note that qualitative improvements will eventually lead to cost reductions for European social security systems.

In view of the above, when can we expect:

- standard oncological registers to be set up, making it possible to improve exchanges of information between scientists and researchers on the basis of comparable and centralised data (on the model of the EHLASS database, which was set up at European level in respect of home accidents)?

- far more extensive, intensive and speedy procedures to be made available for the pooling of experiences on existing therapies relating to all types of cancer?

- breast-cancer research and screening centres to be set up so as to provide one centre for 300 000 EU inhabitants?

Answer given by Mr Byrne on behalf of the Commission

(29 April 2002)

The Commission would like to reassure the Honourable Member that since the first Europe against Cancer programme in 1987, the Commission has set up and co-financed a European Network of Cancer Registries (ENCR), which is co-ordinated by the World Health Organisation (WHO)/International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France. This network has managed to jointly develop European standards for comparability of data on cancer incidence and mortality collected by high class national or regional population based cancer registries throughout the Union. These standards are at present the template for other medical registries which followed, e.g. European Home and Leisure Accident Surveillance System (Ehlass). The network covers about 50 % of all European citizens. It has developed two different databases, the EUCAN database for the general public, which is accessible via the Internet, as well as the EuroCim database and analysis tools for scientists working in the field of cancer epidemiology.

Article 152 (5) of the EC Treaty, stipulates that any Community action in the field of public health shall fully respect the responsibilities of the Member States for the organisation and delivery of health services and medical care. Therefore, the EC Treaty does not allow the Commission to set up interdisciplinary centres for breast cancer research and care in the Member States or to require the Member States to do so. However, the Community has supported and continues to support the development of European best practice in cancer therapy mainly by its research programmes.

Additionally, the European Breast Cancer Network (EBCN), which managed with the longstanding support of the Europe against cancer programme in developing European best practice in breast cancer prevention, widened its scope to include the development of best practice on treatment and care for those European women, which were identified in the participating screening centres, as suffering from breast cancer. A well known output from this network is the European Guidelines for Quality Assurance Mammographic Screening,

of which the third Edition had just been published in July 2001 by the Office for Official Publication of the European Communities in Luxembourg(1). Some Member States lacking national screening programmes up to now have embarked in setting up nation-wide breast cancer screening programmes based on the European guidelines.

(1) ISBN 92-894-1145-7.