The Conselleria de Sanidad Universal y Salud Pública has set up a Coordination Committee for the Management of Healthcare Care for Childhood and Adolescent Cancer Cases in the Valencian Community. The announcement coincides with the commemoration, on February 15, of the International Day of Childhood Cancer.
The Coordination Committee for the Management of Care for Childhood and Adolescent Cancer Cases will have experts from both the Department and the health centers, who will put all their knowledge at the service of improving care for minors and young people with cancer. These professionals will collaborate altruistically and, in principle, for a period of two years.
Some of the tasks of this working group will be to elaborate the care offer for childhood and adolescent cancer; define the clinical criteria for action and referral, as well as the guidelines for monitoring the cases; establish circuits that provide agile care and develop protocols both for requesting a second medical opinion and for, if necessary, seeking palliative care.
The committee will also be in charge of guaranteeing the transition of minors and adolescents to adult units depending on their maturation process.
The functions of this working group will also be to propose the most appropriate professionals, centers and therapeutic protocols for each patient, as well as to promote participation in multicenter studies and clinical trials that contribute to diagnostic and therapeutic advancement; promote ongoing training for both professionals and families; facilitate the provision of social support to the latter and follow-up on survivors.
Health has also resolved to create, also with autonomic scope, a Committee for the Assessment of Proton Therapy Requests, a type of external radiotherapy that uses protons to irradiate tissue affected by a tumor, safeguarding healthy tissue as much as possible.
The main function of the Proton Therapy Requests Assessment Commission, which will also be made up of professionals from both the Ministry of Health and the hospital centers that will collaborate selflessly for two years, will be to assess requests for treatment with prontotherapy.
