“Medical advances in cancer today increasingly allow it to be called a chronic disease with a long-term survival, which is great and promising news. That is why it seems unacceptable to us, cancer patients, that in some EU countries the chances of a patient diagnosed with ‘cancer’ surviving are as unpredictable as winning a million in the lottery.

It’s not acceptable, that in the East-Central Europe countries people are afraid to get sick and die from “the wrong cancer”. Scared because of the lack of timely diagnosis, lack of knowledgeable specialists and state-reimbursed innovative drugs, while in Western Europe this type of cancer is successfully treated, and patients can live for many years.

We are no longer willing to accept the long-standing inequalities in cancer treatment, and therefore along with the policy makers want to raise this problem and find effective solutions to bring this injustice to an end.”

Olga Valciņa, Member of the Board of Latvian Association of Oncology Patient Organizations “OncoAlliance”