Our country will have the first proton therapy center in Southeast Europe, boasts the Minister of Health, Alexandru Rafila, while patients do not even have access to basic treatments that treat cancer.
A new treatment for cancer could be available in Romania – Photo Archive
“Proton therapy will be done, for the first time, in Romania! A definite step in the right direction after the 7 new radiotherapy centers unlocked and funded by the Ministry of Health. Today we started the market study for the construction, at the Bucharest Oncological Institute, of the first National Proton Therapy Center in Southeast Europe“, the Minister of Health sent via the Facebook social network.
About 70 million euros are needed for the construction of such a center, and the project is financially supported by European structural funds.
Proton therapy, also known as proton therapy, is a form of radiation therapy used to treat certain types of cancer. Specifically, this method can destroy the tumor without affecting the surrounding healthy tissues because it uses radiation in a precise way. This new treatment is used to treat cancer and non-cancerous tumors in children and adults. It can be used for a variety of types of tumors located in different parts of the body, including the brain, spinal cord, lungs, liver, pancreas and other organs.
Increases the life expectancy of oncological patients
Vasile Barbu, president of the National Association for Patient Protection, believes that the project will prolong the lives of cancer patients.
“It is an extraordinary thing. Two years ago, I would not have dreamed of such a thing. Discussions took place within the Ministry of Health, the oncology commissions, but no one dreamed that we would be able to have access to this therapy in Romania. It is about patients with tumors and cancers placed in areas that are difficult to access surgically, difficult to reach with current therapy procedures. This will give an extra chance to many patients who need therapy. This allows patients who were treated with radiotherapy not to have their treatment interrupted because the side effects were quite important, especially in the area of young people, children. “he explained.
Vasile Barbu also presented the benefits of this therapy and believes that the center in our country could attract patients from other countries as well, given that globally patients do not have many options.
“The effectiveness is better, the number of radiations per session is lower, the adverse effects are present, but less, more bearable. We save a lot of patients who often died during radiotherapy. Many died not from cancer but from radiation therapy. This therapy will allow doctors to treat cases that could not be addressed“, explained Vasile Barbu, president of the National Association for Patient Protection.
An investment that does not justify itself
On the other hand, Cezar Irimia, President of the Federation of Associations of Cancer Patients, believes that the investment is not justified and that we need many other things before proton therapy.
“The minister would do well to provide us with medicines, he does proton therapy for nothing, because proton therapy is not a universal panacea and is used more in children. An economic estimate for a proton therapy center, made by a businessman, revealed that it is more profitable to take all the children from Romania who need proton therapy to Germany, to a center in Munich. It is much cheaper over 10 years than investing in a proton therapy center. Romania does not necessarily need proton therapy. Brachytherapy needs to be settled, stereotaxy needs to be settled, he needs medicine and access to medicines, needs genetic investigations to give personalized treatment“, said the representative of oncology patients, for “truth“.
Cezar Irimia adds that a proton therapy center opened in Munich was closed because “does not justify the investment”.
But, Vasile Barbu says that this was not profitable because in Germany oncological diseases are detected much earlier than in our country.
“In our country, the main drawback of the health system is late detection. With them, there are few cases that cannot be solved with chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Here is the problem. It's not a big investment, even 5,000 patients nationwide, if treated with this kind of procedure, that's 5,000 patients who had no chance, who had a short life span. We're prolonging these people's lives, and don't connect to devices. It's about people living in families, people socializing, people living with family members. And why not give six months and three months? It is a very important thing for a man, if we give him some chance in life.“, said Vasile Barbu.
Meanwhile, hundreds of patients are in litigation with the Romanian state because they do not have access to new therapies or because innovative treatments are very difficult to enter the drug market here, and genetic testing costs extremely much and is not settled. This while globally, but also in our country, the number of patients with oncological diseases is increasing.
In Romania, 46,370 people with cancer died in 2023, representing 19.1% of all deaths. At the level of the European Union, cancer is the main cause of death among people under the age of 65, according to a new Eurostat report.
