VIII Franco Brazilian Congress of Oncology

Oncology in Brazil and the importance of the VIII Franco Brazilian Congress of Oncology

Dr Carla Ismael – Franco-Brazilian Oncology Society, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

We are very happy with the eighth French-Brazilian Congress because it’s very well-known now; we have around almost 2,000 physicians. What has happened since the beginning, we decided to put, to discuss, topics on the most frequent cancers in the country, in our country that is the same in the world. Let’s say breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung, colon, GI and the other less common but important like melanoma, sarcoma, new drugs, molecular treatments. Now at the conference we have five rooms simultaneously and it’s very nice and we’re very happy with many international speakers, many Brazilians and many physicians that are here for the meeting.

What can you tell us about the high incident of cancer in Brazil?

At the moment it’s breast cancer, the most important now. The second one we have in lung cancer, GI and in the north places of the country we still have uterus, cancer of the uterus, as the second incidence of cancer. Here the problem that we have in breast cancer is the diagnosis is still late; the women arrive with cancer in the late stage that we have to do chemotherapy, previous chemotherapy before surgery or other treatment. That means that it’s not good for the patient and it’s more expensive for the chemotherapy.

How accessible are targeted treatments for regular patients?

In Brazil we have a system, a health system, that says that everybody in the country has the right to be treated with cancer, or it doesn’t matter the disease. Because it’s universal, this system, we unfortunately don’t have this for everybody, this new medication. The only new medication that we have now is trastuzumab for breast cancer but in adjuvant or neoadjuvant, not metastatic therapy but it’s still something. But the other ones for kidney, for everything, we don’t have yet in the system.

What would be your take home message from your experiences at this event?

This event, our message is that we have to believe. Everybody has to believe because when we started more than ten years ago it was a dream, a dream to come the French technology, the French cancer, the people here in Brazil, that was the people didn’t know, the physicians, the oncology people, they didn’t know the French treatment, the French way. And when we started we had only 400 people in our first meeting; now we have almost 2,000 and I have to say that we have only physicians, we don’t have other specialities in our meeting. So it’s very well-known now; young physicians want to go to Europe to continue their education, to go to France, to go to Belgium, to go to Europe in general and before everybody just wanted to go to the US. So I think that we are doing our work.