The survival of patients with breast cancer has changed radically in the last three decadesBut cases continue to rise. It is the most common tumor in women, and since 1990, cases in young women between 20 and 54 years old have increased by 29%, according to the Global Burden of Disease Study Breast Cancer Collaborators, published in the journal The Lancet OncologyGlobally, three times as many new cases are still diagnosed in women aged 55 and older, but experts have detected an increase in cases among women who have not yet gone through menopause.

ARA journalist Mònica Bernabé has been awarded the María Luz Morales prize for feminist journalism for her report The Catalan Health Service (Salut) has no date set for advancing mammograms to age 45.. The award ceremony will take place this Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. at CIBA in Santa Coloma de Gramenet.

Health Minister Mónica García sent a formal request on Tuesday to the regions governed by the People's Party (PP), demanding that they submit, within a maximum of one month, the data from their early detection programs for breast, colon, and cervical cancer for the last five years, which she requested following the errors detected in Andalusia and which they have repeatedly refused to provide. García added that if they do not have all the requested indicators from the last five years, the regional governments will be obligated to submit at least the results they have available so far or those they currently use in evaluating regional screening programs. Meanwhile, in several regions governed by the People's Party (PP), such as Madrid and Andalusia, the argument is that the request does not comply with current regulations and that the data-sharing tool is not yet operational.

A month after the news broke Delays and errors in communication regarding the detection and early diagnosis of breast cancer in Andalusia, The regional government has gone from reporting a dozen affected women to more than 2,300, but neither President Juanma Moreno Bonilla nor his deputy and new Health Minister, Antonio Sanz, have offered an explanation for the origin of this crisis. The government has announced additional funding and personnel for the screening programs—which Andalusian professionals, those affected, and the opposition consider insufficient—but what exactly happened that prevented the healthcare system from contacting women who had received suspicious mammogram results? In a parliamentary Health Committee meeting this Thursday, which lasted about four hours, Sanz attempted to downplay the issue and assured that his government has taken "measures" to ensure that "this does not happen again." He also stated that "what is necessary" has been done to ensure that all women who received inconclusive results—meaning that a tumor cannot be confirmed, but neither can it be ruled out—receive their follow-up tests before November 30. Regarding responsibility for these communication errors, however, he insisted that "no general order was given" from his administration for specialists not to notify patients of their results. "Professionals make decisions based on medical criteria," he asserted. The president of the Seville Association of Women with Breast Cancer (Amama), Ángela Claverol, met with Sanz on Wednesday and on Thursday stated that the regional minister attributed the origin of the problems detected in the breast cancer screening program to "verbal orders." "According to him, it was a verbal order from the department heads, who said it wasn't necessary to call [the women] anymore because there was a company that would do it," she indicated. Sanz did not repeat this explanation during his appearance on Thursday. Claverol indicated that the regional minister did not clarify which company was in charge of this process and, when she asked him again, he referred to a number of people or working groups. "I must be very clumsy, because, in the end, I didn't know the answer," he said. Sanz, on the other hand, described the meeting with Amama as "very productive" and emphasized that he did give "all the necessary explanations." Claverol admits that there is still distrust of the Regional Government and has detailed that the Regional Minister has been asked five questions: where the breast cancer screening care system failed; how many diagnostic tests have been carried out since the error came to light; how long it will take to perform biopsies and surgeries and to assign oncologists; what type of contracts will be offered to professionals; and how long the Regional Government will take to address the financial claims of those affected, so that they don't have to wait "for years." The Minister's Reproaches

Health Minister Mónica García traveled to Seville this Thursday to meet with Amama, and in a press conference, she asserted that the Andalusian Regional Government has "lost control" over breast cancer screening programs due to "negligence" and urged Moreno to provide explanations. "There's no way to understand Moreno Bonilla's handling of the crisis, just as there's no way to understand the handling of the crisis by Mazón, Díaz Ayuso, or Mañueco. It's always the same playbook of discrediting, insults, and passing the buck," she criticized. García emphasized that the Ministry will "get to the bottom of" the problems detected, whether through legal, administrative, or civil channels, and will investigate what happened to mammograms that are unsigned or have disappeared. These statements have infuriated Sanz, who accused the minister of engaging in political campaigning, given that she lacks jurisdiction in this matter during the parliamentary committee hearing. In this regard, he indicated that the Andalusian screening program is working and that his government will now improve it with more resources.

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Breast cancer is one of the cancers with the best prognosis, but not all diagnosed cases behave the same way, and some tumors do not respond well to treatment. For example, one in five patients worldwide has the HER2-positive (HER2+) type, which, when it metastasizes, is highly aggressive and has a high capacity for proliferation. New targeted therapies have radically improved survival, but there are still patients who end up developing metastases despite receiving treatment or who are diagnosed at advanced stages, when the prognosis is worse. Now, a team led by the breast cancer group at the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) has demonstrated in a study that there is a more effective strategy than the current one for these patients. The drug is on the verge of receiving approval from the national health system. Researchers at VHIO, led by Cristina Saura, head of the breast cancer unit at Vall d'Hebron Hospital and of the VHIO breast cancer group, have improved the prognosis for patients with a therapeutic combination using two cancer drugs. These are two antibodies administered together to patients with HER2+ metastatic breast cancer who have not yet received other treatments or chemotherapy. According to the studies, this drug duo reduces the risk of disease progression or death by 44% compared to the standard treatment currently offered in the public healthcare system. According to the conclusions of the study published this Tuesday in the journal The New England Journal of Medicine, On average, patients treated with the experimental combination went 40 months without disease progression compared to 26.9 months for patients who received standard treatment.

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The Seville Prosecutor's Office has opened an investigation into the complaint filed by patients this week who reported that some medical records related to mammograms and ultrasounds used to detect breast cancer had been deleted or altered. The investigation opened this Friday follows the one opened on Thursday by the Andalusian High Prosecutor's Office to investigate errors in the early detection program for the disease.

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The Andalusian Prosecutor's Office has opened an investigation into the complaints it has received regarding errors in the early detection program for breast cancer. The first step was to request a report from the Andalusian Regional Government's Ministry of Health, which also demands an explanation of the measures it has taken "to compensate the victims and prevent future similar incidents." The Public Prosecutor's Office's decision comes in a week in which the crisis surrounding breast cancer screening has further fueled political debate in Andalusia. In fact, women and the opposition are criticizing the Andalusian government for manipulating some mammograms that appear on platforms accessible to both patients and professionals.

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In Catalonia, 5,439 cases of breast cancer were diagnosed last year, a hundred more than in 2023, according to data from the Department of Health. These cases represent 29% of all tumors detected in women, and nearly 80% affect women over 50 years of age. Patient survival is high—almost 90% five years after diagnosis and 84% ten years after—as is women's participation in the early detection program. In 2023, 443,608 women aged 50 to 69 were invited to undergo a mammogram, and two received one. Thus, 1,465 new cases were detected.

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María José Méndez lives in Seville. She is 61 years old and, after a successful operation, is undergoing hormonal treatment for breast cancer at the Virgen Macarena University Hospital. Six months passed between the mammogram from the prevention program that detected something was wrong and the time she underwent further tests to diagnose the disease. Now, through the Association of Women with Breast Cancer (AMAMA), she has met other women affected by errors and delays in screenings under the early detection program in Andalusia.

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Communication errors and delays in breast cancer screening in Andalusia are taking the form of complaints in various attempts to have the justice system clarify what went wrong and determine who is responsible. The Andalusian High Prosecutor's Office already has four complaints on the table and expects to receive others that have already been publicly announced in order to combine them and assess how to proceed, according to sources from the Public Prosecutor's Office told ARA. Two weeks ago, the The Andalusian government admitted errors in the diagnoses and estimated that there would be at least 2,000 affected. And the trickle of women continues. The scandal, which has already claimed the first political leader with the dismissal of the Minister of Health, Rocío Hernández, represents the biggest political crisis Juanma Moreno Bonilla has had to face since becoming president of Andalusia in 2019.

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Up to 2,000 women in Andalusia don't know if they have breast cancer due to a misdiagnosis. This is the tragic assessment made by Juanma Moreno's administration, a member of the People's Party (PP), after admitting that they performed dubious and, therefore, inconclusive tests on these patients. The Andalusian government has announced that starting this Thursday, they will contact them "one by one" to repeat the tests. Those affected received results stating that a "probably benign lesion" had been detected through the early detection program, the objective of which is to identify cases as early as possible to quickly treat the disease and improve the prognosis for patients. But that conclusion could have been erroneous. The Andalusian Regional Government has now acknowledged that those affected "may not have been informed" of a positive result, so they will be called back for a new test.

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"With her breasts exposed," literally and metaphorically, is how writer Núria Esponellà has experienced the breast cancer she was diagnosed with in October 2023. Literally because it has been demanded of her by mammograms, tactile examinations, radiotherapy sessions, radiotherapy sessions... because, as she explains, with the disease she has learned to value the essential things and, like someone throwing away their bra, to shed the armor and limiting and useless thoughts in order to feel free and love herself and her body, including her breasts marked by aging and the scars from the operation. With bare breasts It is also the title of her latest book, where the writer bears witness to the pain she has suffered, but also to the courage and positivity with which she has faced the illness.

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Aliki Nikolaou began a journey of tests and treatments since she was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2021. It took months of hormone therapy, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, as well as two operations: one to amputate her breast and another to remove her lymph nodes. She is now continuing hormone therapy, and explains that it has been a path of stress and emotional exhaustion to overcome a disease that affects almost one in eight women worldwide. Of these, 15% end up developing bone metastases. Aliki was able to undergo an experimental test that predicts the risk of cancer spreading and whether the treatment she receives is adequate.

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The years-long wait in public healthcare for breast reconstruction after breast cancer may be numbered in Catalonia, according to the Minister of Health, Olga Pané. The head of the department has pledged to put an end to the "excessive delays" suffered by some women who underwent a mastectomy years ago and have yet to undergo surgery to reconstruct their amputated breasts. These delays cause physical, psychological, and social harm to all patients, who cannot rebuild their lives after cancer because they remain mutilated even though their tumors were removed years ago. This Thursday, the Minister announced that she will approve a new instruction that will bring order to the classification of these patients and ensure that each center is clear about the "procedures and protocols" to follow, thus avoiding long waiting lists. Pané has said that the rule is expected to come into force after the summer following a question from Commons MP David Cid, who was also particularly active in trying to solve this problem last term.

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Sometimes the most sincere friendships are also the most unexpected. Yolanda Fuster, Patrícia Moya, Aïda Cerdanya, Loli Guart, and Íngrid Icra met after suffering from breast cancer. The disease brought them together, but the bond goes much further. "Our conversations don't revolve around cancer. When we see each other, we talk about our children, about life," says Fuster, and Icra adds, "And about sex." They are in their 40s and 50s, and a few months ago, they saw how their experience with the disease was transformed into a play, Women of Radio, written by Cristina Clemente and directed by Sergi Belbel. Clemente –author of productions such as Lapland (2019) and A comprehensive therapy (2022) – infiltrated this collective friendship to build the characters of three women who on stage play Àngels Gonyalons, Sara Espígul and Sara Diego. Women of Radio It premieres at La Villarroel on March 22nd after a successful tour of several theaters across the country. They have already seen it and praised it: "It's a show that touches you deeply, and it made us laugh a lot," emphasizes Icra.

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By 2050, breast cancer cases will increase by 38% and patient mortality will rise by 68%, according to a projection by the International Agency for Research on Cancer – an organization that depends on the World Health Organization (WHO) – published this Monday in the journal Nature Medicine. This means that by mid-century, the agency estimates that there will be 3.2 million new cases of breast cancer detected and another 1.1 million associated deaths.

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"Abandoned, that's how I feel," says Ester Lizandra Artigas, 46, unable to hold back her tears. She has been waiting for five years to have breast reconstruction surgery after suffering breast cancer. It is because she is desperate that she has agreed to pose in front of the camera and show her amputated body, so that this little-discussed side of breast cancer may also reach the public conversation and, above all, so that no other woman has to go through what she has gone through. It is the same motive that moved the other women who took part in this report to allow themselves to be photographed, despite their pain and shame.

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Stretched out on a stretcher and with her hands clasped on her abdomen, Mila Fernández, 51, could not hide her anguish and her joy this Monday. Believe it or not, both feelings came to her in equal measure. The nurse was making the last preparations and the anaesthetist asking the last questions before taking her to the operating room of Terrassa Hospital. "This way I can finally close the circle," Mila sighed. A circle that has lasted no more and no less than "four years with its days and nights", as she says. An eternity. That's how long she has been on the waiting list for a breast reconstruction operation after suffering from cancer.

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