The appeal by health actors, from civil society to patients and researchers, warns: the proposal for the European Union’s 2028–2034 Multiannual Financial Framework, which plans to integrate health funds into a broad competitiveness fund, would reduce transparency, accountability and continuity of health investments. All this while cancer is growing in number of cases and in social cost, with millions of diagnoses and deaths every year and strong inequalities among Member States.
The warning comes in a context of growing pressure on European health systems. The text cites millions of cancer diagnoses and deaths every year, an increase in cases expected by 2035 and ever wider gaps among Member States in the field of prevention, treatment and outcomes. It stresses that long-term investment in cancer care is essential not only for public health, but also for the EU’s economic resilience.
The appeal calls on members of the European Parliament to preserve health as an autonomous budget priority, to protect cancer funding and to align the next budget with the EU’s commitments under the UN Sustainable Development Goals and with the World Health Organization’s standards on universal health coverage.
According to the signatories, the Union’s budget should instead protect health as an autonomous priority, ensure stable resources for prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care for cancer survivors, and align spending with the 2030 Agenda and with the standards of the World Health Organization on universal health coverage (UHC: Universal Health Coverage).
The choice to make health policy “invisible” in a strategy aimed at promoting economic and industrial competitiveness is not technical, but political: and it risks being paid for with worse health, more fragile systems and more lives lost.
Eduardo Pisani, All.Can International
Read and sign the appeal: https://wecanadvocate.eu/featured/open-letter-cancer-cannot-wait/#
