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From next January, the joint clinical cancer registry of Brandenburg and Berlin will also deal with the prevalence, causes and conditions of cancer in the population.
To this end, the cabinet in Potsdam and the senate in Berlin passed the resolution on a new state treaty on Tuesday, as both sides subsequently announced. The two state parliaments still have to agree.
"The goal is to further improve the quality of medical care for cancer patients," said Anna Heyer-Stuffer, State Secretary in the Brandenburg Ministry of Health. "Thanks to great progress in early detection, diagnostics, therapy and aftercare, the chances of survival and the quality of life of people with cancer in Germany have improved considerably over the past decades." This medical success is also thanks to the cancer registries.
Berlin's health senator Ulrike Gote pointed out that cancer is still one of the most common causes of death in Germany. "To win the fight against cancer, we need to understand the disease even better." This, she said, is only possible with appropriate data. Cancer registries are supposed to record and make available such data from diagnosis to individual treatment steps and aftercare to relapses, survival and death. The new state treaty is the basis for being able to collect such data, said Gote.