FoCP pledges $200K to two projects to combat cancer
33% Reduction in cancer mortality by 2030 is global target 4.3m People die prematurely from cancer every year
sharjah — The Friends of Cancer Patients (FoCP) has pledged $200,000 to support two major international projects for cancer control.
A partnership agreement in this regard was signed with the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), aimed at increasing the global impact of their activities to combat cancer in 2019–20.
Under the agreement, $200,000 will be deployed to support two central projects spearheaded by the UICC. The first is UICC’s TNM (Tumour, Lymph Node, Metastatic) project on cancer staging, which is essential to determining more appropriate prognosis and treatment. Within the gamut of this project, the UICC will work to build knowledge and skills of coding and staging cancer cases in the region, thereby strengthening cancer surveillance using essential TNM. The UICC will also promote the collection of internationally consistent and comparable information on childhood cancer stage in cancer registries.
The financial contribution will also step up the UICC’s ‘Treatment for All’ (TFA) advocacy initiative, which has made great strides since its launch in 2018 to consolidate the international cancer community’s efforts to address the global equity gap in access to cancer services, and raise civil society awareness on the important subject.
Around the world, 4.3 million people die prematurely from cancer each year. To successfully meet the targets of a 25 per cent reduction in cancer mortality by 2025 and a 33 per cent reduction by 2030, global commitments must be translated into national action. The TFA campaign encourages UICC members to identify priorities that best fit their national needs and strategies.
Princess Dina Mired of Jordan, UICC president, said: “The strong leadership of countries like the UAE in garnering regional and global commitment to fighting cancer is to a great extent the result of the dedicated efforts of civil society organisations like the FoCP.”
Sawsan Jafar, chairperson of FoCP Board of Directors, said: “This partnership is in line with our joint efforts to achieve a significant reduction in cancer deaths worldwide. We are proud to join the UICC Champions Programme, and look forward to playing a central role in furthering the ambitions of Treatment for All in the Mena region.”
The amount pledged has been allocated from the ‘Ameera Fund’ — a global cancer fund launched in 2016 by Sheikha Jawaher bint Mohammed Al Qasimi, wife of the Ruler of Sharjah, Founder and Royal Patron of FoCP, International Ambassador of the World Cancer Declaration for Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), and Chairperson of The Big Heart Foundation (TBHF), in memory of the late Ameera BinKaram.