SAVE YOUR SKIN FOUNDATION AND ALL.CAN CANADA APPLAUD CANADIAN PREMIERS' CALL FOR FASTER ACCESS TO LIFE-SAVING MEDICATIONS FOLLOWING COF MEETING

TORONTO, Dec. 26, 2024 /CNW/ - Save Your Skin Foundation and All.Can Canada commend the announcement by Canadian Premiers at the close of the Council of the Federation meeting on December 16th of their recognition of the urgent need to provide faster access to innovative, potentially life saving, medications for patients.

The decision to start with a pilot project that will cut time to drug access for cancer drugs by nine months is a much-awaited decision by cancer patients. We trust that the pilot will include important companion tests that must be covered alongside of the treatments to identify which patients will benefit from them. We also hope that there will also be a plan to expedite the time to diagnosis.

To date, Canada has not kept up with other G7 countries in developing processes to expedite access to these badly needed medications and their companion diagnostics to the detriment of cancer patients.

"On behalf of cancer patients, we are so grateful and relieved to receive this news," said Kathleen Barnard, President Save your Skin Foundation, a national patient led cancer group focussing on melanoma and other skin-related cancers. "Innovative treatments saved my life when I was diagnosed with stage four melanoma 21 years ago with a poor prognosis for survival. The melanoma patient community was one of the first to benefit from genetic tests to identify who will respond to innovative treatments. This announcement creates the opportunity for more cancer patients to be diagnosed sooner, with more accuracy and specificity, and be able to access these often life-saving treatments."

The cancer community commits to working with governments and their treatment negotiating body for new drugs, the pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance, to implement this demonstration program successfully and to support the expansion of it to other treatments as well as their companion diagnostics that are so badly needed by patients across the country.

SOURCE All.Can Canada

For further information: Kathleen Barnard, [email protected], 604-842-5658