For those who fall ill with cancer, the right to be treated without discrimination or disparity of any kind must be guaranteed and ensured by the Italian and global social and health system. But the right to “cancer cure” also means rehabilitation at 360 degrees, since without rehabilitation interventions the healing, when possible, will be incomplete and the sick person will not be able to return to life, to a new life. This should not be forgotten now that it is celebrated on February 4th, the World Cancer Day, World Cancer Day.
Which rehabilitation for patients
The first commitment of fav (the Federation of voluntary associations in oncology), after its establishment almost twenty years ago, focused precisely on the need for “oncological rehabilitation” as a complement to “cures” for all patients. Rehabilitation consists of multidisciplinary health and social interventions aimed at reducing disabling sequelae, improving the quality of life and guaranteeing the person the maximum possible participation in social life. Just twenty years ago, when cancer healing seemed a visionary aspiration, we denounced, in a conference organized by Aimac (the cancer patients association) at the Chamber of Deputies in the presence of the then president Casini, the difficulties faced by cancer patients in requesting bank loans and insurance coverage and this prestigious newspaper also gave ample space to the rights of the patients oncological. A few years later, in 2005 at a congress in Warsaw, as secretary of the European Cancer Patient Coalition I strongly affirmed these difficulties also at the European level.
Direct and indirect social costs for patients
The inequalities of access to treatments, including those of a bio-psycho-social rehabilitation type, prevent the sick from being able to fully return to an active life, to work, to a dignified social position and, as in a tragic joke of life, this short circuit involves the risk , severe, of lower chances of cure and cure from cancer. The financial toxicity caused by the oncological diagnosis is a phenomenon that we know well from having studied it and also contributed to scientifically describe it. The direct and indirect social costs investigated and published in the Reports of the Observatory edited by Favo, which affect the patient and the cancer family risk making therapeutic treatments vain or at least seriously weakening the result. The cancer patient treated or even cured of the disease but who loses his job and with it the dignity of person and the economic sustenance that guarantees his survival, the patient who is not put in a position to overcome the disabling effects of the disease and therapies, the person who fails to process the psychological, social, economic frailties caused by cancer: can all these former cancer patients really return to life?
The cost paid for Covid
Overcoming the socio-economic gap also means allowing all patients to have access to all-round care. And this can make the difference between life and death, or at least a quality life and that is why it is necessary to overcome the inequalities and socio-economic barriers that affect the effective equity of access to quality care. This is one of the pillars of the action on which the celebrations of the World Cancer Day 2022 focus.Covid has certainly made diagnostic and therapeutic services for non-covid diseases more difficult to use and among these we know that cancer will have an account very salty in terms of human lives already in the coming months. Without considering, then, the economic crisis caused by the pandemic and which weighs above all on the weakest sections of the population who will face increasing difficulties in taking care of themselves also for economic reasons.
The right to be forgotten
We believe that the mobilization of these days for a law that recognizes and protects the right to be forgotten for those cured of cancer in the context of private health and life insurance is certainly right: it is a right on which Favo has been working for some time and for which he has carried out studies and built alliances, among others, with Airtum e Ania. However, the socio-economic situation is such that, if not preceded by concrete actions that ensure the sick the possibility of returning – through rehabilitation – to an active life, to work, to a socio-economic condition of dignified safety, even the right oblivion would in fact remain a painful chimera. If this is true in general, it becomes even more urgent and necessary for the less well-off people who, as shown by the aforementioned survey promoted by Favo on the social costs of cancer, are forced to give up priority needs such as psychological support and rehabilitation to support the expenses necessary for transport and diagnostics. And all of this, of course, contributes seriously to the increase in inequalities and disparities.