The Global Breast Cancer Initiative: a strategic collaboration to strengthen health care for non-communicable diseases

To mark International Women’s Day, on 8 March, the World Health Organization (WHO), in collaboration with the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is launching the Global Breast Cancer Initiative. The launch of the initiative will coincide with a stakeholders’ meeting, starting at 14:30 CET on 8 March, and IARC Director Dr Elisabete Weiderpass will address participants during the opening session.

Dr Weiderpass and colleagues have written a Comment, published in The Lancet Oncology, outlining the background and goals of the Global Breast Cancer Initiative. The primary objective of the initiative is to reduce global breast cancer mortality by increasing access to breast cancer early diagnosis and prompt comprehensive cancer management. Millions of deaths from breast cancer can be averted if the reductions in breast cancer mortality already achieved in high-income countries are also achieved in low- and middle-income countries.

The Global Breast Cancer Initiative will focus efforts on the potential of multisectoral partnerships, programmes that promote sustainable capacity-building, and innovation and monitoring systems that use data for decision-making. Working in unison with other United Nations agencies and partners, WHO and IARC will provide strategic guidance to support governments in prioritizing cancer in general, and breast cancer in particular, as part of their national health agendas, strengthening health-care systems with breast cancer as an entry point to enable progress across all malignancies, and offering broader health, social, and economic benefits.

Anderson BO, Ilbawi AM, Fidarova E, Weiderpass E, Stevens E, Abdel-Wahab M, Mikkelsen B
The Global Breast Cancer Initiative: a strategic collaboration to strengthen health care for non-communicable diseases
Lancet Oncol, Published online 7 March 2021;
https://doi.org/10.1016/S1470-2045(21)00071-1

Read the Comment

Watch the Global Breast Cancer Initiative stakeholders’ meeting (14:30 – 17:00 CET)