Opinion: Let’s learn from COVID and rebuild better for cancer care

Article content

After SARS-COV-1 nearly 20 years ago, governments largely ignored calls to prepare for an even bigger pandemic in the future. This left health systems generally unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the enormous efforts of healthcare workers and policy makers on this issue, it cannot be denied that the cost has been high for Canadians and the economy.

Article content

The pandemic revealed some of the gaps in our healthcare system and reminded us that even before it was not in optimal shape.

Now, as our collective focus remains on the pandemic, we are faced with an even deadlier health emergency, one that has been growing for decades: rising cancer rates. Over the past year, cancer has quietly killed four times as many Canadians as COVID-19, and delays in treatment resulting from the pandemic have only exacerbated the situation.

The pandemic has made the fight against cancer more challenging and complex at all levels. Test and exam numbers have been drastically reduced since the first wave and have yet to catch up. Only in Quebec, 91,000 fewer mammograms and 60,000 fewer colonoscopies were carried out between April and December 2020 than in the same period of the previous year. Patients who discover lumps or have other worrisome symptoms have been reluctant to seek medical attention. Diagnostic biopsies and other procedures have been delayed, as have thousands of vital cancer surgeries and other treatments.

Article content

These delays, along with the increased incidence of cancer due to an aging population, explain the tsunami of cancer that we are facing now and will get worse in the years to come. We need immediate action.

We now have the opportunity to rebuild our health care system to make it more resilient, efficient, and capable of meeting future patient care needs. To achieve this, we must start doing things differently.

Efforts are now aimed at improving health care capacity with new approaches, not by building hospitals, but by moving some health services out of hospitals closer to patients. Public-private partnerships with pharmacies and infusion clinics could also help. A new approach that respects and fairly compensates nurses is essential. But we can only increase capacity up to a point.

Article content

We must turn to innovation and research to meet this challenge. Fortunately, we are also in a period of tremendous innovation in cancer care. New emerging healthcare technologies are redefining the way we diagnose and treat cancer with the advent of personalized healthcare and precision medications. The innovation, ingenuity, and technological disruption that were implemented during the pandemic should encourage us that much more is also possible for cancer care.

Importantly, a national infrastructure for setting standards and sharing knowledge and technology in diagnosis and treatment is essential. For example, while access to next-generation gene sequencing is slowly but surely implemented province-by-province, pan-Canadian collaboration to advance this across the country more quickly will help.

Article content

We have also learned the importance of a vibrant research ecosystem in partnership with the biopharmaceutical industry to enhance our ability to bring new therapeutic innovations to Canadians faster. In this context, accelerating research, development and the adoption of new innovations by the health system so that patients can benefit from them as quickly as possible is essential if we want to rebuild our health systems and make them more resilient. We must accelerate targeted investment in a concerted manner throughout the country.

While healthcare is a provincial jurisdiction, the federal government and the provinces must coordinate and enhance research investments while working together to integrate research with the treatment setting.

Article content

Winston Churchill said of the creation of the United Nations after the disaster of World War II that “we must never let a good crisis go to waste.” Let’s not waste the opportunity to rebuild after the pandemic so that we can manage the cancer crisis.

Dr. Gerald Batist is director of the Segal Cancer Center at the Jewish General Hospital. Barry Stein is a Montreal attorney and president of Colorectal Cancer Canada.

All our news related to the coronavirus can be found at montrealgazette.com/tag/coronavirus

For information on the vaccine passport, Click here.

Sign up for our email newsletter dedicated to local coverage of COVID-19 at montrealgazette.com/coronavirusnews.

Help support our local journalism by subscribing to the Montreal Gazette here.