I’m going to participate in two sessions, one is related to the barriers that women face in breast cancer control in Latin America and the second one is about how to use the law as an efficient mechanism in cancer control.

How can law and legal processes be used to advance quality improvement across various aspects of healthcare systems?

I would like to answer that question with this example of what is happening right there in Latin America. There are nine countries that already have laws specifically to attend cancer control. Federal, national or simply a law for cancer. For example, in Mexico we have been working for the last 2½ years, pushing this similar law in order to establish a national cancer control plan for our country.

In contrast with the United States, they already have both a law and a comprehensive national cancer control plan. The first one 53 years ago and the second one more than 20 years ago. It turns out that the WHO recommended to more than 190 countries around the world to construct national cancer control plans in order to have a public policy to address this disease. The thing here is that in Mexico we lack both a law and an NCCP.

How can international human rights be used to better healthcare in LMICs?

The protection of health is a human right and it is supposed that in every single country it needs to be executed. People need to be protected and governments need to act. But it turns out that it doesn’t happen in every country. So that’s the reason why we are pushing laws in order to obligate government, states, to construct these plans and, furthermore, to provide access, treatment, hospitals, infrastructure and, more important, to increase the expectancy of life for cancer patients.

Would you like to share any success stories?

In Mexico we promoted amendments to three federal laws in 2019 in order to provide occupational leave for parents of children diagnosed with cancer. After almost three years of hard work within the Mexican Congress, in both chambers, the Mexican Senate and the House of Representatives, we obtained the approval of this amendment, this legal initiative. Nowadays, fortunately, we have more than 24,000 parents benefitting with this new right in our country which means that they can be aside with their children during their oncological treatments for up to one year. The government has the obligation to pay them 60% of their salary during this year.

Please summarise your other talk.

The main problem we have regarding breast cancer is late diagnosis. It is related with cultural matters. Women in some cases, depending on the region in which they live, in some cases they don’t want to go to the doctor to have screening. Or in some other cases if they are married probably their partners do not allow them to go for a check. The main thing here, or the problem, is that according to the Pan-American Organisation for Health by 2040 the numbers we have of women diagnosed with breast cancer will increase to 40%. That’s one of the reasons why we need to take action. That’s one of the reasons why we are here attending the World Cancer Congress 2024 in order to share some experiences and good examples of good practices in different countries and, of course, put in a lower number what is considered [??] from here to 2040.