[ad_1]
A hidden crisis is affecting women diagnosed with gynecological cancer, since treatment options vary and survival rates remain some of the poorest.
Gynecological cancers remain among the most lethal for women and include uterine (endometrial), ovarian, cervical, vaginal and vulvar cancers.
However, these have been among the most insufficient types of cancer, despite being one of the main causes of deaths related to cancer in women.
Every day, 19 Australian women are diagnosed with gynecological cancer and more than six women lose their lives.
Cancers often progress in silence and remain without being detected until they reach advanced and incurable stages.
More than half of all gynecological cancers are classified as rare, with limited investigations, treatment options and without early detection tests apart from cervical cancer.
Alex Neville, 56, lives with incurable endometrial adenocarcinoma and is a firm defender of clinical trials and cancer investigation.
First he noticed changes in his period in 2019, that his header thought he was related to menopause.
It was not even more tests and a biopsy confirmed its type of cancer that led to a hysterectomy and multiple rounds of radiation and chemotherapy.
“He feels like a lottery as to where his cancer appears, and it shouldn’t be so,” he told AAP.
“Perhaps if this cancer had been better financed and had more research, we could have been in a position in which we had better diagnoses and more options on how to treat it.”
The access of Mrs. Neville to treatment has also been aggravated by difficulties due to life in regional Tasmania.
For Ali Crawford, multiple trips to doctors were needed to find an eventual uterine cancer diagnoses that led to a radical hysterectomy followed by chemotherapy.
His experience has highlighted multiple difficulties in cancer care, including diagnostic delays, limited access to the molecular profile and fragmented treatment pathways.
“Enough is enough: we are tired of silence, inaction and lack of investment in cancer investigation, leading the lives of thousands of women every year,” he said.
“Each person has left a uterus, it’s time to honor that and take these diseases seriously.”
The leading organizations, including the Gynecological Oncology Group of Australia in New Zealand, Ovario Australia cancer, the Ovarian and omico Cancer Research Foundation have joined strength to call critical underestimation in gynecological cancer.
They have published the Gynecological Cancer Transformation Initiative, a national research program to revolutionize the diagnosis, treatment and attention to improve survival rates and save lives.
The group is asking for a financing commitment of $ 100 million from the federal government for four years, even for specific research, to the action of this initiative.
“We cannot allow ourselves to wait any longer, for women diagnosed with gynecological cancer, this is literally a life or death crisis,” said Oncology Group Clare Scott AM.
“The gynecological cancer transformation initiative marks a turning point, one that will save lives and give hope to thousands of women and their families.”
[ad_2]
Source link