Minister of Health Evis Sala has revealed the “great formula” for the fight against cancer. At the forum with the solemn title “Cancer Control in Albania: Prevention, Screening and Patient Care”, instead of a simple and concrete assessment of what is not working in the oncology service today, Sala preferred a long speech on “transformations”, “multidimensional approaches” and “health ecosystems”. As if Albania is a Nordic scientific laboratory and not a place where patients wander around for basic medicines.
According to the minister, an "ecosystem" is being built that includes screening, prevention, the creation of the National Institute of Oncology and the National Cancer Network, the expansion of the list of reimbursable drugs, and the improvement of radiotherapy. Beautiful words, large structures, new acronyms, but no answer to the daily reality in Oncology.
Evis Sala spoke as a minister, but also as an oncology imaging doctor, recalling her years with patients and the "beautiful moments when the battle is won." A human story that sounds touching, but that does not change the fact that today many patients lose the battle not only with the disease, but with the system.
Instead of this empty rhetoric, perhaps it would be more useful for the minister to do something much simpler:
go to the oncology hospital herself, sit in line as a patient, wait for a visit, deal with the lack of medicines and delays, and only then tell us about "ecosystems."
Because you don't need fancy forums to understand the crisis. A day in the oncology corridors is enough for that.
Because in Albania, the problem is not the lack of vision in PowerPoint, but the lack of medicines on the shelves. It is not the lack of strategies, but the lack of basic services. There is no lack of institutes and ministerial candidates, but efforts to make what exists functional fail.
Because in reality, while the minister talks about expanding screening and new institutions, patients continue to seek treatments that they often cannot find within the hospital or in Albania.
And so, amidst "step-by-step transformations," cancer moves much faster than the state.
