Deputy Health Minister Ursula Demkow stresses that the medical community and families of small patients can count on good cooperation with the ministry. Like her, two deputy ministers are physicians. Health Minister Izabela Leszczyna is not a medic, but as Urszula Demkow assures, she cares about the well-being of patients, especially the youngest and those struggling with the most difficult-to-treat diseases.
According to the deputy health minister, in addition to investment and reimbursement needs, diagnostic vigilance right from the pediatrician's office visit is very important.
- It is necessary for GPs to be aware that the cause of children's complaints may be cancer. It is important for doctors who first come into contact with a sick child to keep this in mind. Cancers in children are relatively rare. It is crucial to recognize them as early as possible. Certain symptoms, such as, for example, leg pain, anemia or headache, which are very nonspecific, should guide primary care physicians or pediatricians to think about such diagnoses as well," reminds Urszula Demkow.
Professor Anna Raciborska, head of the Department of Oncology and Oncologic Surgery for Children and Adolescents at the Mother and Child Institute, takes a similar view.
- Pediatricians should be aware that cancers in children occur, even though they are rare diseases, because about one in 600 children is diagnosed, and we have about 1,200 diagnoses a year. In smaller children, we think first of congenital diseases, metabolic diseases, allergic diseases, and cancer appears somewhere at the end. It is crucial that pediatricians, in the differential diagnosis they perform at their office, also think about the fact that it could be cancer," urges Prof. Anna Raciborska.
A large and much-needed financial injection is to be given to Polish pediatric oncology in the amount of 3 billion zlotys, which was originally to be credited to the account of public television. The list of things that need to be done, and perhaps will be done with this money, is long.
- Poland needs a center for proton therapy, dedicated to children, among others. We need funding for molecular research, which is essential for good diagnosis and targeted therapy of cancers, whether they are blood or soft tissue cancers. The facilities at some centers need to be improved, and this also applies to the center where I work. We should not forget those areas that are related to pediatric oncology, but are not so strongly associated with it. These are, for example, psycho-oncologists or physiotherapists, who are indispensable for good treatment and for the results of this therapy to be as good as possible. It is worth remembering that we are now fighting not only for life, but also for the quality of that life. The idea is that after treatment our patient will be able to return to his environment and do what his peers are doing. For this you need a whole staff of people, not just doctors," Professor Anna Raciborska mentioned.
