Former Prime Minister Alfred Sant has told the European Parliament that, as a cancer survivor, he supports all measures that can be taken from a political perspective, which can help to fight the disease in all its forms.

In a statement submitted for a recent European Parliament topical debate dedicated to the ‘Fight against Cancer’, Alfred Sant stressed that the allocation of more research and more quality care for all patients was a priority.

Sant noted that two other goals should be actively pursued on a European basis. One is to raise awareness across the population concerning the incidence of cancer particularly on how it arises and how to watch for it.

“More and more educational programmes are needed to carry out this task in well-designed formats to ensure they communicate knowledge not fright”, stated Sant.

The second goal, according to Sant, is to promote ever-wider screening programmes firstly, for population strata that stand the highest risk, but also wider. All data show that such programmes, by identifying the disease when it is in an early stage, are succeeding to cut down mortality rates.

Sant concluded by saying that there were very valid NGOs active on a European basis to promote these aims and the European Commission would be wise if in its anti-cancer initiatives, it reserves a substantive role for such NGOs due to their good outreach capabilities.