90,000 Madeirans, aged between 50 and 74, will be called in this first semester to undergo colorectal cancer screening.
The announcement was made this morning by the regional secretary for Health and Civil Protection, Pedro Ramos, at the presentation of the campaign of the Regional League Against Cancer, Março Azul.
This screening, as informed, will be carried out along the same lines as breast cancer screening, through a call and notice. “A survey has already been carried out by the entire Regional Health Service and there are about 90 thousand people who, in fact, may be in this situation to start adhering to screening”, he explained.
Praising the work carried out by the Portuguese League Against Cancer with regard to colorectal cancer, especially in raising public awareness of the issue, Pedro Ramos pointed out that “colorectal cancer has a very high incidence”, being already “the second cause of death” in Portugal.
“We know which are the five neoplasms with the highest incidence in the Region and for some of them, in fact, we needed to implement our population-based screening”, he added, stressing that in the face of them the Region will have “a different attitude”, which allows “a circuit , a so-called greenway for citizens, encompassing general and family medicine and differentiated hospital care”.
He also mentioned that in January the Region met with elements of the national Siima Rastreios IT platform “where the implementation, at a regional level, of the five population-based screenings is being carried out, namely that of breast cancer; colorectal; of the cervix, diabetic retinopathy and children’s visual health screening, which will also begin in the Region in 2022″, he said, adding that this year the population-based screening of lung cancer should also start.
On the occasion, the secretary responsible for Health also rejoiced with the path taken so far in breast cancer, whose population-based screening began more than 20 years ago, indicating that, with this, it was possible to “increase the survival of 65% to 85%”. Therefore, he maintains, “this entire path will be taken for all other neoplasms”, he concluded.