Zorana Maravic talks about Blue March. 

Now we know that due to Covid, a significant number of patients have not undergone their CRC screening and also their appointments have been delayed. Consequently, many patients will receive their diagnosis at a later stage, when the treatment of CRC is more difficult, and chances of survival are lower. We have also seen some scary predictions in the articles that have been published, that due to delayed diagnosis, CRC survival will decrease in the years to come by more than 10%. 

For a number of years, DiCE has been working with dedication to improve CRC screening practices at all levels. While it is a disease that can be treated and beaten if diagnosed early and if screening tests are widely available, it is unacceptable that we are still losing around 250.000 lives annually across Europe due to CRC. 

We passionately believe that all European citizens, in the age group of 50-74, should have easy and timely access to CRC screening and we are strongly advocating at all levels and working together with different stakeholders, to achieve this. It is great that screening programmes are one of the pillars of the Beating Cancer Plan and we look forward to receiving the new Screening Recommendations that are to be published by the European Commission this year. 

On the other hand, we feel it is equally important to educate European citizens on the importance of early diagnosis and CRC screening because they need to understand why they should do the screening test once they are invited to it. Or to reach out to their healthcare provider in case they have any symptoms. 

We will continue with our efforts to see fewer people across Europe being affected by CRC. In that way, the objectives of ECCAM (European Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month) throughout the years has been to produce a meaningful public awareness campaign on colorectal cancer throughout Europe. 

In the case of this cancer, population-based screening for people from 50-74 is a proven method towards this goal. So this year’s campaign called ‘Colorectal Cancer Answers’ is all about seeking answers. We invite the public through the visual pun of a question mark that looks like a colon, to talk to their doctor about getting screened - if they: are 50 and over, have any symptoms at any age or have a family history of CRC. 

Having seen the Blue Mars awareness campaign provided by PF this year which incorporates the screening appointment counter initiative, we feel that our campaigns complement each other and that we are aiming for the same goals: Education and early detection!  

For you or a loved one, take an appointment!

It is really important for the relationship between a patient organization and a pharmaceutical company to be a long-lasting and a respectful one. Also, it is important for patient organisations to be able to be involved in the development of the medicines as early as possible, because we know what it means to live with a specific condition and we can provide the company with significant inputs. 

At DiCE, we feel this is the type of relationship that we are building with Pierre Fabre. 

The willingness of Pierre Fabre to help us disseminate our CRC Awareness Campaign is important because this helps us amplify our messages and in turn we hope, save people’s lives. Equally important for us is that beyond Blue March, Pierre Fabre is supporting various activities that we do, such as the development of the molecular educational toolkit for patients that are diagnosed with CRC and will be made available to the community this year. 

Zorana Maravic 

CEO of Digestive Cancers Europe (DiCE)

More information on DiCE and all their actions : 

Last year’s ECCAM was all about attracting patients to the valuable services of their local patient organisations with the slogan ‘Talk to us, we’ve been there’. This campaign is still being used by our Members locally.

Watch the #ECCAM2021 campaign video to discover more.

Along with this campaign, we also run awareness campaigns for all digestive cancers.