International Universal Health Coverage Day is not only a reminder of the global commitment to health for all but also a crucial opportunity to emphasize the specific needs of cancer patients and oncology professionals. Given that approximately one in five people develop cancer during their lifetime, ESMO remains steadfast in its mission to ensure that cancer care is an integral part of the UHC agenda.
ESMO calls for countries to guarantee UHC benefit packages to their entire population. These should include a core set of comprehensive, safe, affordable, effective, and high-quality services for prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment according to guidelines, palliative care, and rehabilitative services for cancer. The packages must be well funded and delivered by a well-trained and well-resourced health workforce, and the provision of these services should not result in financial hardship for patients or lead to catastrophic and generational impoverishment.
To this end, ESMO offers cancer resources to support countries in delivering the three key strands of UHC.
- The ‘ESMO Global Curriculum in Medical Oncology’ can support training the necessary workforce to ‘increase population coverage’.
- The evidence-based ‘ESMO Clinical Practice Guidelines’ and ‘Pan-Asian Adapted Guidelines’ can support decisions to cost-effectively ‘expand essential health services’.
- The ‘ESMO-Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale’ and ESMO Scale for Clinical Actionability of molecular Targets (ESCAT) can support countries to prioritize the use of cancer medicines to both improve health outcomes and ‘reduce the financial burden of health services’.
ESMO has also supported the development of the WHO Cancer Module within their Integrated Health Tool (IHT) by expanding it with data from two to 20 cancers, and by supporting its implementation so far in five countries - Kenya, Mozambique, Kyrgyzstan, Senegal, and Palestine. The tool facilitates national strategic health planning and costing in low- and middle-income countries, with a focus on strengthening health systems.
On this International UHC Day, ESMO reminds the 193 UN member states that their adoption of the 2023 UN Political Declaration on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in September, is a commitment to move forward with prevention and control of non-communicable diseases, including cancer. The commitment needs to be put into action urgently for the world to achieve UHC by 2030, and emphasis on a comprehensive range of essential cancer care services, from prevention to palliative care, remains central to this goal.