Isabel Mestres, CEO of City Cancer Challenge, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Did you know that in cancer care, quality can be the difference between life and death? We often talk about progress starting with innovation: new medicines, new technologies, new tools. But sometimes the most important question is much more basic.
What happens if a woman is diagnosed too late? If her pathology result is unreliable? If she is referred from one service to another, but no one is really holding the pathway together? If treatment starts, but is not completed?
In breast cancer, quality is not a technical detail. It is survival!
Last week, the second edition of Breast Cancer: Global Quality Care Matters was released, co-authored by C/Can team member Lisa Montel and Benjamin Anderson among others. The book sets out what good breast cancer care looks like across the full pathway.
But the harder question for me is – how to make that quality real in very different health system realities?
That is the work we do every day at City Cancer Challenge (C/Can) in partnership with World Health Organization to turn the Global Breast Cancer Initiative framework into practical, locally led improvements in care.
Why cities?
Because the city is where the health system becomes tangible. It is where hospitals, laboratories, clinicians, patient organizations and health authorities meet. It is where fragmented services can become a pathway a woman can actually follow.
And this is what GBCI in action should be measured by: more cancers found early, timely diagnosis, and treatment completed, not just started.
Thank you to all the co-authors of the book, and to all the editors and contributors behind this important resource.”
Other articles featuring Isabel Mestres on OncoDaily.