Breast cancer, 4 out of 10 women have not received a letter for screening

The other data

Of those who received the invitation letter, 73% declared they had signed up. Also in this case the territorial picture is not homogeneous: membership reaches 80% in the North and 69% in the Centre, while it stands at 54% in the South and 53% in the Islands. Among women who did not participate, the most frequent reason was that they had already recently performed the test themselves (59%). Explicit disinterest in screening instead concerns only 3% of responses.

Pink October

The results of the investigation were presented today at the Chamber of Deputies in a press conference promoted by MP Vanessa Cattoi, coordinator of the parliamentary intergroup 'Together for a commitment against cancer' together with the group of 50 patient associations 'Health: an asset to be defended, a right to be promoted'. The meeting, organized as part of Pink October, the month dedicated to the fight against breast cancer, was an opportunity to reiterate the value of prevention and screening and to renew health policy priorities in this area. "As an Intergroup, we will continue to support discussion and collaboration between all the actors involved, so that prevention is increasingly accessible, appropriate and effective and constitutes a concrete guarantee of health protection throughout the national territory. In this direction, an OECD estimate also highlights the potential impact of a further improvement in results in the oncology field: if Italy achieved the best survival levels observed in OECD and EU countries, through improved screening, diagnosis and treatments, an oncological death could be avoided premature in six," said Cattoi. For Anna Maria Mancuso, president of Salute Donna Odv, "we need more effective invitations, simple information channels and greater flexibility of appointments, especially in areas where territorial differences are more marked; but we also need structural interventions that improve and extend access to the prevention and early diagnosis of breast cancer".