Minister Of Health: The Majority Of Cancer Deaths Occur In Developing Countries

JAKARTA - Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin stated that nearly 70 percent of cancer deaths in the world occurred in developing countries, including Indonesia because they were diagnosed in advanced stages.

"This happened because two of the three cancer patients in Indonesia were diagnosed in the advanced stage," he said at a seminar entitled Precision Oncology Symposium: Addressing Diagnostic Gaps in Personalized Cancer Care by Roche Indonesia in Jakarta, reported by ANTARA, Saturday, August 26.

In fact, Budi said, 30 percent to 50 percent of cancer can be treated if found at the beginning while most patients are diagnosed at the end of the stage.

He explained that the late diagnosis of cancer was caused by the lack of specialist doctors and medical devices which caused long queues and long waiting times.

"This causes access to cancer referral services to be very limited," said Budi.

Not only that, the ability of health workers to diagnose cancer is also not optimal which causes a lack of quality of service in hospitals.

Meanwhile, he said a cancer diagnosis approach needed to follow the latest technological developments because genetic-based cancer tests could help early, accurate, and precise cancer tests.

Development of medicine precision services is also important in detecting cancer risk early, detecting biomarker drugs for precision therapy.

However, efforts to massively and integrated cancer require the support of all parties and the role of professional organizations, the private sector, and community organizations as partners.

"National health development continues to be needed to achieve a common goal in nourishing the nation," he said.

One of the most common and deadly examples of cancer is lung cancer which is responsible for more deaths than combined breast, colorectal, and prostate cancers.

In the diagnosis of lung cancer, sampling is now faced with a series of challenges including limited availability of instruments and the lack of optimal integration between relevant disciplines.

Consultant Patologi Anatomi di RS dr. Sardjito mengatakan Didik Setyo Heriyanto mengatakan untuk meningkatkan efektifsi penanganan cancer pulumon dibutuhkan kolaborasi multidisciplinary sejak fase awal.

The multidisciplinary collaboration involves experts from the field of oncology pulmonary,atomical pathology, and oncology radiology to ensure the acquisition of in-depth information as well as optimization in sampling for laboratory evaluation.

This collaborative approach has the potential to accelerate the results of the examination, reducing the duration that was originally more than two weeks to five to 10 days.

"With an increasing response speed, patients have early access to target therapy such as EGFR, ALK, and PD-L1 immunotherapy, in addition to other conventional therapeutic options," he said.