A few weeks ago, I received a letter from the Canadian government. To my surprise, it was an invitation to take a cervical cancer screening test, also known as a Pap smear. What caught my attention was that Canada, like Brazil, has a public health system (something that does not happen in the US). However, in Brazil, I have never received any correspondence from the SUS (and I have never heard of anyone who has) inviting me to take a test. On the one hand, the organization of the Canadian system is impressive, as it keeps track of when the last test was performed and notifies the patient when the test should be repeated, in addition to keeping up-to-date records with people’s addresses. Receiving this letter made me feel “taken care of” by the government in a way. But this apparent care is nothing more than a way of protecting public funds. It is more efficient to perform periodic tests on the population and eliminate possible diseases early, than to receive a patient with a tumor that is already in an advanced stage and have to bear all the costs of treatment. This preventive policy is especially relevant in a country like Canada, where statistics indicate that 1 in 2 people will be diagnosed with cancer during their lifetime (data from the Canadian Cancer Society, available at http://www.cancer.ca/en/cancer-information/cancer-101/canadian-cancer-statistics-publication?region=on ). In addition, here, the patient’s file with their complaints and test results is available online. So, if I need to go to the hospital, they just need to “pull” the data from my file to know my entire medical history. Imagine the savings that an integrated system like this would generate for the public coffers in Brazil, with preventive tests and greater control over each person’s clinical condition, also facilitating diagnoses and benefiting patients/taxpayers. For now, for Brazil, this scenario remains in the realm of ideas. Who knows, one day…
Health – Canadian Prevention
