Prevention and care of cancer in Mexico

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Published: 12 Dec 2016
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Mayra Galindo Leal - Asociación Mexicana de Lucha contra el Cáncer, Mexico City, Mexico

Marya Galindo Leal meets with ecancertv at the 2016 World Cancer Congress to discuss her experience in providing support and resources for cancer control, prevention in Mexico.

She discusses the impact of taxation and regulation of tobacco in changing attitudes to smoking, and reflects on the shared experience with other Spanish speaking organisations at the congress.

Dr Luis Manuel Encarnación spoke further with ecancer about the México Salud-Hable coalition here.

[?? 0:04] was born sixteen years ago and it was built on the necessity of having all the needs of the patients supported because the Asociación Mexicana de Lucha contra el Cáncer is not an association with all the resources. So I invited all the big and small organisations under the same issue to help us to give support to all cancer patients in whatever their needs were. So it has been work for these sixteen years and we were invited to a meeting when we had this change of government in 2012 by the Coalición México Salud-Hable. So we were there, we invited all the persons that were candidates for the new government and at the end nobody was there except representatives and we joined telling all the needs each of these organisations had.

So at the end this was a forum to integrate more organisations into this coalition but this coalition especially works on tobacco and cancer is affected very much by tobacco. So that’s why we really are close friends to help us both with our campaigns and with our campaigns about prevention and all the issues around this tobacco problem.

Can you tell us more about the campaigns?
                           
In Mexico City first we were very successful in closing all the restaurants and public buildings and not to have permission to smoke in there. Nowadays it has been reproduced all over the country so that’s a very successful thing. Also we have bans in the cigarette packages, it was also made by them, by this coalition, and also the tax, tax on these packages.

How can other organisations get involved?

I was just in the first reunion with Latin American people talking Spanish here in the UICC Congress. This is the first time in maybe sixteen years so it is a big step and I think that many people in Mexico could be convinced to come and to integrate into the UICC if Spanish and Spanish issues, Latin American issues, are talked about.