Insight

Apr 15, 2025, 08:45

Guillermo Chantada Opens the Forum on Essential Medicines for Children with Cancer

Guillermo Chantada, President of the International Society of Pediatric Oncology (SIOP), delivered the opening keynote at OncoDaily’s virtual forum “The Essential Medicines for Children with Cancer: From Access to Action.” Held on April 15, 2025, the event brought together global leaders to discuss urgent solutions for improving access to life-saving cancer medications for children, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

In his powerful remarks, Dr. Chantada underscored the unacceptable global disparities that persist in pediatric oncology treatment—and the collective responsibility to change that.

Key Takeaways from Dr. Guillermo Chantada’s Address:

“Thank you very much, dear friends, it’s such a pleasure to present in this forum. SIOP is actively participating in the platform that has been mentioned and also has a very active discussion group on essential medicines whose members are going to be the presenters in this call. So for SIOP, it is really a priority.

The list of the drugs that should be accessible for all the countries need to be improved, continuously. New indications come, and not just new indications or new drugs. It’s the way we can apply these box in low and middle income countries in many times, it’s not the same as we would do in high income countries. We have different issues. We have different challenges in our setting.

The treatment related mortality is very important. Some drugs that have been used in high income countries for some indications need to be redefined and rethought in lower middle income countries. But we also having in mind that treatment related mortality is one of our most important issues to deal with. So any improvements that we can make figuring out how to use these drugs is really essential, and these other forums where we can really make that happen.

SIOP is also supporting in association with Resonance and Servier. We are working on the ACT4Children program, it’s going to be described later in detail, but it is also a very important project for sale in order to enable the access to essential drugs for children with ALL. So, again, a real pleasure, a real honor for SIOP. Thanks, OncoDaily for organizing these very important event and looking forward to a lot of very fruitful discussions.”

About the Forum

The Essential Medicines for Children with Cancer: From Access to Action by OncoDaily focuses on the WHO Essential Medicines List for Children, the new applications including Blinatumomab and Temozolomide, the challenges different low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are facing with the access to medications and the role of initiatives such as ACT4Children and the Global Platform for Access to Childhood Cancer Medicines (GPACCM).

Essential Medicines for Children with Cancer