500,000 people are diagnosed with cancer in Germany every year, and by 2030 it will be 600,000, fears Michael Baumann, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg.

By the year 2040, there will even be 40 million new cancer patients per year worldwide.

Many health systems in other countries could not stand it.

Most years of life are lost due to cancer, in Germany alone there are four million years of life per year.

Baumann is convinced that regular and targeted preventive care and early detection could cure 40 percent of cancer patients.

Heike Schmoll

Political correspondent in Berlin, responsible for “Bildungswelten”.

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Early detection, however, suffered during the corona pandemic.

Mammography screening was briefly suspended at the beginning of the pandemic, and colonoscopies were also postponed or omitted entirely for fear of infection.

Because the number of inpatient cancer treatments in the first Corona year 2020 fell by six percent and the number of operations fell by five percent, the DKFZ also fears significantly more cancer deaths in the next few years.

Data protection often stands in the way

Even if you survive cancer, the quality of life for many of those affected drops significantly, and some are no longer able to work.

For this reason, in the third year of the Cancer Decade funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), patients are to be systematically involved in research projects.

Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) therefore announced an alliance for patient participation on Friday in Heidelberg.

41 players have already signed the alliance, including the patient organization Patvocates, whose founder and managing director Jan Geißler himself fell ill with cancer at the age of 28.

"Cancer is not just cancer," cancer researchers have learned by now, said Baumann.

Even within one type of cancer in a patient, there are very different cancer cells that determine the course of therapy and the course of the disease.

That is why you need personalized oncology and individually tailored prevention and treatment measures.

Transfer needs to be strengthened and researchers need to work with industry.

"In the future we will see that patient participation in research is normal," Baumann said. Ten years ago nobody saw that.

Other countries are already significantly further than Germany.

It is said that data protection often stands in the way of personalized cancer research.