Breast Cancer Awareness Day is Saturday, 19 October, but the MD Anderson Cancer Center Madrid – Hospiten is getting an early start. Today, Tuesday, 15 October, it’s joining the challenge of raising awareness and helping to prevent breast cancer, which affects over 35,000 women every year in our country. With the organisation of a workshop entitled “Journey Through Breast Cancer” led by the El Mundo newspaper and the Yo Dona supplement, MD Anderson Madrid – Hospiten wants to inform and educate patients and their relatives about breast cancer, the most frequent type of tumour among women. The most interesting points of the encounter, to be held at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, will be posted on Twitter under the #NosSumamosAlRosa hashtag.
The day’s events, which will be opened by Doctor Laura García Estévez, head of the Breast Tumour Section of MD Anderson, and by Marta Michel, editor of Yo Dona, will begin at 5:30 pm and will last approximately two and a half hours. During that time eight specialists in medical oncology from MD Anderson Madrid – Hospiten, together with specialists from other centres, will discuss above all the importance of breast cancer research and a multidisciplinary approach to the disease.
Under the title “Breast Cancer Research: Unfinished Business”, the first round table will focus mostly on research. Accompanying Doctor García Estévez and Gema Moreno (head of the Molecular Laboratory) will be some of the big names in the area, such as Doctor Javier Cortés, head of the Breast Cancer Unit at Instituto Oncológico Baselga; Javier Castrodeza, former secretary-general of Health and Consumer Affairs, and Marta Puyol, science director at the Spanish Cancer Association (Asociación Española contra el Cáncer). TVE journalist Paz Rubio will be the moderator, and the discussion promises to throw a good deal of light on the current scientific scene.
Next, five specialists from the centre (Doctor Gloria Ortega, oncologist and surgeon; Doctor Sonsoles Alonso, gynaecologist; Doctor Silvia Pérez, head of the Breast Radiology Department; Doctor Ricardo Cubedo, in charge of Sarcomas and Hereditary Cancer; Doctor Natalia Carballo, head of the Radiation Therapy Department) will participate in a second round table on public-private partnerships as a tool for fostering research and the problem of metastatic breast cancer. Doctor Isabel Calvo, medical oncologist at the centre, and Doctor Anabel Ballesteros, medical oncologist at Hospital Universitario La Princesa in Madrid, are in charge of directing the participants.
Lastly, at the close of the second round table, a third round will begin, “Up Close and Personal with Breast Cancer”, which boasts the special participation of Pauline, a Kenyan patient diagnosed with breast cancer, who stars in the upcoming documentary “Historia de mujeres” (Women’s Story), which is being prepared by a team of RTVE reporters and Doctor Estévez.