The Ministry of Health has conveyed this Thursday to María Varela, a 43-year-old metastatic breast cancer patient, its intention to extend access to the breast cancer screening program from 45 to 74 years old, in line with the available scientific evidence. This new recommendation could become official at the end of the year, provided it has the support of the autonomous communities.
"I leave happy," she highlighted in an interview with Europa Press after holding a meeting with the Director General of Public Health and Health Equity of the Ministry of Health, Pedro Gullón, and with the Deputy Director General of Health Promotion and Prevention, Estefanía García.
Varela, who at the beginning of March registered 65,000 signatures to demand that mammograms be brought forward to age 40, has explained that ministerial officials have recognized that Spain is "deficient" in breast cancer screenings compared to other European countries. Currently, the recommendation for mammograms in Spain is limited to women between 50 and 69 years old.
For this reason, Health has committed to strengthening this line of work, already initiated, and to presenting in May the proposal for the expansion of screening before the Public Health Commission. Afterwards, it must go through the Benefits, Assurance and Financing Commission and, subsequently, be submitted to a vote by the autonomous communities in the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System (CISNS).
In parallel, the Ministry has accepted to collect more precise information about breast cancer patients in Spain, in order to determine if the evidence supports an additional reduction in the age of access to tests down to 40 years, as Varela proposes.
"I am happy because it is a very important basis to continue talking and dialoguing about the topic of breast cancer, because the screening program is from 1990, so it is clear that it is an obsolete program and that it has to be modified," she highlighted.
"Always hand in hand with scientific evidence"
The Minister of Health, Mónica García, has ratified in statements to the media before the CISNS plenary session the will of her department to review, together with the autonomous communities, the breast cancer screening protocols, with a view to bringing forward the starting age for mammograms.
"We are evaluating and we are constantly going after scientific evidence. I believe we are a ministry that always goes hand in hand with scientific evidence and protocols must be based on which target population those protocols can be most effective and efficient for," he/she has indicated.
Along these lines, it has pointed out that there are "many reflections" about the advancement of the age of screenings. Even so, it has stressed that Spain has a breast cancer screening program "very consolidated" and "very effective".