Pavel Maiseeu: Our common goal is to change attitude towards oncological patient as social outcasts

It is known that annually almost 18000 people die of cancer in Belarus, but almost no one talks about recovered patients, including the recovered themselves – the topic is almost a taboo.

Let us recall that not so long ago First International scientific and practical conference “The quality of life of cancer patients: systematic approach to organizing assistance after active treatment” took place in Minsk. The conference was organized by the social and educational institution «Center support of cancer patients «In the Name of Life».

Pavel Maiseeu, a member of the open society “Belarusan society of oncologists”, the head of the department of the Aleksandrov anticancer and cancer prevention organization has been supporting cooperation of doctors and society for a long time for the above-mentioned systematic approach to oncological problem, the problem of the society rather than the medical problem.

- The thing is that doctors should give treatment to patients, of course; but the result depends on the interaction between a doctor and a patient. It is obvious and refers not only to oncological diseases but to any other illness, too, - notes Pavel Maiseeu in the talk with the “EuroBelarus” Information Service. – When a patient is in a medical institution under doctor’s supervision, everything is simple: doctor tells what to do, prescribes some medicines, some procedures, and makes prescriptions. But as soon as patients steps out of the hospital they lose this care and remain face to face with the illness, and a serious one.

Pavel Maiseeu explains the specifics of the illness that presupposes regular procedures and recommendations even after a normal high-quality treatment.

- And that is where after discharge from hospital if a person is left with him- or herself and the illness that he or she overcame some unpleasant things happen. Often people just don’t know what to do next, and that is much more psychologically important than being discharged from a hospital. Since many start taking up the same bad habits, whereas others start restricting themselves in everything, up to food. But where the cooperation between a doctor and a patient is high survivability is also higher. It is a well-known fact that positive people live longer and has better treatment results than those who are in constant state of depression.

According to Pavel Maiseeu, the main thing is “to convince people that they have a chance, give them hope that they can be cured”.

- Not only say: you know, we guarantee you that everything will be good. It is wrong – we cannot guarantee anything. But it is very important to give people hope; this is what the whole idea is about. When we met Iryna Zhychar for the first time (the head of the social and educational establishment “Center for support of cancer patients “In name of life” (Russian “Vo imya zhizni”) – EuroBelarus) we discussed that we should support not those patients who are condemned and not those who need palliative therapy, hospices, etc. We should support those patients who got full high-quality treatment and are cured for now in order to unite them and provide results and good life – this is what our task is about.

Pavel Maiseeu emphasizes that for now “a cancer patient in Belarus is a social outcast, let’s call things by their proper names”.

- These people are silent in the society. While those who survived HIV get lots of attention in media and so on, cancer patients who were cured are unknown. And thus, the vicious circle appears: people know that if a person got cancer he or she is doomed, since those, who successfully overcame this disease do not talk about it. That is why I think that the start of this open dialog is one of the success-stories in our cooperation with the “Center for support of cancer patients “In name of life”. Everyone knows that Ronald Reagan and Vaclav Havel had cancer, were cured, and ruled the country – and the disease they overcame didn’t hamper them. Whereas in our country cured patients are afraid of talking about it but rather invent a different story for themselves. This is the problem we need to solve – society’s attitude towards cancer. Sometimes people don’t even know that cancer is not contagious, that a cancer patient can communicate with children, that there is no need to isolate them. If you come to our center, especially during weekends, you’ll see children and people with baby carriages who are visiting their close ones. People feel valuable.

According to Pavel Maiseeu, change of attitude towards the problem at the level of the society is the systemic approach.

- These cells for support for cancer patients should be everywhere. They should coordinate with doctors’ network in order to prevent any extremes and untested methods. That is why we are talking about the cooperation between district cancer specialists and social support groups. And if we change the system, we will get a different result and the society will stop having fears. Situation in our country is not worse than that of our neighbours. As to the sickness rate, it is growing everywhere; we have to pay for everything. People live longer, which means that they got more chances to get cancer. It is a disease of the mature and the elderly and we can do nothing about it. Formerly many people didn’t survive to the age of the biggest risk. But situation is changing, I should say. However, we still need to change a lot and our directions for life from childhood. We have a lot of work to do there; we are only at the beginning of our way. While in the US doctors raise the alarm about dogs of those who smoke that fall ill with cancer, we cannot even protect children from that.