The price that cancer patients paid is steep. ”Professor Axel Khan, head of the Association against cancer, Of the consequences of the government’s strategy against Coronavirus disease On patients with chronic diseases. It is believed that disrupting the hospital due to the virus will lead to additional deaths. According to him, “up to 10,000 people will lose their lives” due to insufficient care for these diseases during the epidemic. The number that can continue to increase due to In Ile-de-France, the program is currently being canceled and patients transferred.
About 20% of the diagnoses were never made
As Axel Kahn explains, at the start of the year the National Cancer Institute published an assessment of planned and ultimately unimplemented diagnoses. Around 400,000 cancer diagnoses are made each year, “20% omitted”, The doctor explains. This represents about 80,000 patients.
The situation “has worsened since then. We must have 90,000 or 95,000 delays in diagnosis, which should be added to the delay in colonoscopy to confirm colorectal cancer and delay in colposcopy of the cervix.” The result is also valid for “postponement of tumor surgery.” [relatives au cancer, ndlr] Change priority “and those for reconstructive surgery.
Axel says cancer patients paid a “heavy price”. “Today we estimate that 3000, 4000, up to 10,000 people will lose their lives due to the development of their cancer because it was not treated optimally due to Covid.” The world is concerned about the expected increase in these numbers. “The fact that we chose to live with this extremely high viral circulation for two months was the worst thing for all people with chronic illnesses,” he said.
“We are in an unreasonable situation”
Because “hospital stress increases and increases” Axel Khan stresses the problem. The medical evacuations run by Ile-de-France mean “we source hospital distress and are worsening the condition of chronically ill patients in New Aquitaine and Nantes and in all areas to which we will send dozens of medical aid. Of people in intensive care.” With up to 100 medical evacuations planned and 40% postponement of surgical interventions in Ile-de-France, “we are in an unreasonable position,” estimates the head of the Association Against Cancer.
Added to this is the fact that hospital infections associated with the virus “were too many” and that “few patients died not from cancer but from Covid” because we accepted “a very high viral turnover”. However, the scientist recalls, “The main danger is that we do not treat cancer the way we should be treating it.”
Therefore, he urges all patients who cannot delay their hospital visit. However, this situation makes Axel Khan “angry”. “I am angry,” he assures. “The decision not to reformulate Ile-de-France is primarily a political one, but it is a very bad policy from a health point of view.” He said a decision on containment should have been taken “a long time ago”.
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