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Health: Study: One Romanian out of four experienced cancer
InoMed, the Centre for Innovation and Medicine, and the company specializing in market studies- IMAS made the first representative sociological research at national level which proposed to evaluate the relation between Romanians and cancer.
Data were collected between April 1 and 20, 2016, on a representative sample at national level, according to CSID.
Study results indicate the fact that a Romanian out of four has experienced cancer while 5.2% say they were diagnosed with a form of cancer, which corresponds to a total number of 840,000 persons.
21.1% had/have a family member (husband/wife, son/daughter, mother/father) diagnosed with cancer at a certain moment, which corresponds to a total number of 3.34 million Romanians. 45% of people who answered consider that cancer diagnosis always leads to death.
The main fear concerning cancer is that it cannot be cured (26.6%), added to the lack of efficient treatment (7.4%), the unavailability of treatment in Romania (7.1%), the lack of money needed for treatment (5.8%), as well as the fear of disease (7.6%).
65% of Romanians, regardless if they were or not diagnosed with cancer, consider that the Romanian state does not ensure the right treatment for cancer patients. At the same time, 75% of Romanians consider that it takes too long for a new discovered medicine to reach patients in Romania.
“At this moment, Romanian patients with cancer have free access to less than 15% of medicines approved over 2006-2015 by the European Drug Agency”, says Dr. Marius Geanta, the president of the Centre for Innovation in Medicine (InoMed).
According to CSID, Romanians consider that the main support in the fight against cancer is family (46.3%), followed by new technologies (including medicines and state of the art medical equipment 30.1%) and physicians(16.5%) while only 1% consider that the authorities represent the main support in case of cancer diagnosis.
“The Health Ministry has a confidence share of only 39% , followed by public hospitals (35%). At the opposite pole we find confidence in physicians, 66% of Romanians saying they have large and very large confidence in physicians. Another important aspect pointed out by the study is that 9 out of 10 cancer patients are satisfied by their oncologist,”said Dr Marius Geanta.
Only 6% of cancer patients in Romania declare they participated in clinical studies with oncology medicines, on the background of 53% of people who consider that a clinical study offers access to last minute treatments, better than the existing ones.