Innovative treatments against cancer: patients will benefit without discrimination

Claimed insistently, from 2010, by a small number of practitioners, that colleagues considered, for their part, "expensive", innovative therapies against certain types of cancer will begin to be available, from 2019, in six institutions of reference health.

Speaker, Tuesday, on the show The Guest of the editorial channel 3 of the Algerian Radio, the president of the Algerian Society of Medical Oncology recalls that supported, then, by the Directorate of Pharmacy of the Ministry of the Health, a majority of doctors refused to prescribe these to patients, on the pretext that they came back expensive.

Professor Kamal Bouzid reports that these "blockages" were finally lifted by the current Minister of Health, provided, he says, that the use of these drugs for the specific treatment of lung cancer, skin and bladder tumors, "be optimized" at the five six centers of reference. It is, he says, the center Pierre and Marie Curie of Algiers, the specialized institution of Misserghin (Oran), the hospital facility Didouche Mourad of Constantine, as well as anti-cancer centers. El Oued, Laghouat and Adrar.

He is keen to point out that in order to benefit from these treatments, there can be no question of practicing medicine "at two colleges", ensuring that all patients whose condition requires their employment will have access to it without any discrimination.

it notes, moreover, that "a lot of progress" has been obtained in the treatment of certain pathologies of cancer, including that of the bad that doctors avoid, as far as possible, to perform ablation. It is the same, he adds, with regard to the side effects caused by radiotherapy, immunotherapy and chemotherapy.

Treatment costs of various types cancers (between 20,000 to 100,000 euros / year per patient), Professor Bouzid considers that this is a "false debate", from the moment, he explains where as is the case in a number of European countries, when a treatment turns out to be inoperative, the firm producing it is obliged to reimburse it.

In this connection, he states that he is aware that the National Social Security Fund has examined this question, one of the solutions, he underlines, aimed at overcoming the problems of "enormous costs" for Algeria, and not only.