The official start of the Twinning project

The opening ceremony of the Twinning project „Improvement of Quality of the National Cancer Screening Programmes Implementation“ was held at the Ministry of Health.

The objective of the project is the improvement of implementation of the existing national screening programmes for breast cancer, cervical cancer and colon cancer, in order to reduce the morbidity rate and the mortality rate of these diseases.

“We are not pleased by present results, the response rates and the outcomes of treatments are not satisfactory and they can only encourage us to become more active and do even more when it comes to screening programmes“, deputy Minister Ivan Bekavac stated and added that we have the possibility to participate in a Twinning project, thanks to the friendship and communication with colleagues from Lithuania and Slovenia. Thanks to them we have the opportunity to reach better solutions with regard to screening programmes implementation.

“In spite of all efforts, the incidence of malignant diseases is not decreasing, but stays at the same level“, said the Acting Director of The Croatian Institute of Public Health, Ranko Stevanović, the BC Project Leader. He said that the response rate for screening is unsatisfactory. “Barely 50 percent of invited women respond to breast cancer screening invitations, the response rate is a little higher for cervical cancer, and for colon cancer screening it is less than 30 percent. People are not responsive until they have symptoms, and then it is already too late“, said Stevanović.
“Every year around 3 million instances of malignant diseases are diagnosed in the European Union, and despite all measures that have been taken, we lose about 1.7 million lives annually“, warned Narimantas Samalavičius, the MS Project Leader and Chief of the Center for Oncosurgery at the National Cancer Institute in Lithuania. He also emphasized that the screening programmes implementation is one of the most important measures for control of malignant diseases.

Malignant diseases are second on the list of death causes in Croatia, immediately after cardiovascular diseases, and 30 percent of Croatian patients die from malignant diseases. According to the most recent data collected by the Croatian Institute of Public Health, the most lethal is lung cancer which was responsible for 2827 deaths in 2014, and it is followed by colon cancer which is responsible for 2094 deaths. During the same year, 1086 people died of breast cancer, and 750 men of prostate cancer.

The Twinning project is implemented by the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Lithuania, National Cancer Institute of Lithuania, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Central Project Management Agency in Lithuania and National Institute of Public Health of the Republic of Slovenia, and the partners are the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Croatia, Croatian Institute of Public Health, and the Central Finance and Contracting Agency, Croatia.

The envisaged duration of the project is 12 months, and it will be implemented by the Ministry of Health and the Croatian Institute of Public Health in cooperation with experts from Lithuania and Slovenia. The Transition Facility Programme for Croatia will finance the implementation of the project in the amount of 609.425,00 EUR.

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