Oncology news

The Czech Society for Oncology (CSO), the Czech Ministry of Health (MZCR) and the General Health Insurance Company (VZP) have started negotiations on how to keep running the system for data collection, verification and storage within the National Cancer Registry (NCR).

The prospect of cancer patients' recovery is much better than 15 years ago, as results from the conclusion of Czech oncologists and the Czech Statistical Office.

The 14the European Cancer Conference in Barcelona (23-27 September 2007) has seen the creation of the European CanCer Organisation (ECCO) as a continuation of the Federation of European Cancer Societies (FECS).

The launch of a new web portal on cancer epidemiology in Slovakia has been officially announced on the "Bratislavské onkologické dni", an oncology conference in Bratislava (October 3-5, 2007). The portal can be found on http://www.nor-sk.org.

After a positive feedback on the interactive map of Czech healthcare facilities involved in cancer treatment, the English mutation of this map has been launched recently. You can find more detailed information on the purpose of this map in the former announcement.

On 22th August 2007, the Czech public was misinformed about the allegedly poor treatment results of the Czech oncology, which had been published in the EUROCARE-4 study in the Lancet Oncology journal (Richards M. 2007. EUROCARE-4 studies bring new data on cancer survival. Lancet Oncol 8(9):752-753.).

The largest health insurance office (VZP) signed agreement with the Czech Society of Haematology (CHS) on a new way of costly therapy reimbursement.

With the growing awareness of professional public about the NOP On-line project, there is a growing number of research projects related to oncology, which are presented on this portal. For this reason, a new section of NOP On-line portal was developed, entitled as "ONCOforum: Research and Registry Projects of the Czech National Cancer Control Programme".

The standardized presentations of Comprehensive Cancer Centres (CCC) and Comprehensive Cancer Groups (CCG) contain essential information on these healthcare facilities, which is organized into a well-arranged uniform scheme, thus enabling an easy comparison of these CCC/CCG.

Comprehensive Cancer Centres (CCC) and Comprehensive Cancer Groups (CCG) make only a fraction of healthcare facilities which are involved in the care of cancer patients.

On 26/02/2007, Jiri Vorlicek (President of the Czech Society for Oncology) and Pavel Horak (Director-General of the General Health Insurance Office) concluded the so-called "Agreement on Understanding", which is regarded as a historical milestone in the Czech oncology. Jiri Vorlicek assumes that other health insurance offices will join this initiative soon.