Bettina on a mission

OPEN LETTER  TO ALL CANCER PATIENT ADVOCATES v1.0 Dear colleagues, #COVID19 is ravaging through our societies. We already see how it affects cancer patients.  Here are my thoughts. In the last weeks, we have seen in our Melanoma community that - follow-up appointments and control scans are postponed - patients are switched to treatments that are less effective but have fewer side effects, can be taken orally instead of IV or are completely taken off treatment - clinical trials are closed, leaving patients whom all other therapies have failed out off options - Stage 4 cancer patients are not being given permission to self-isolate at home 'because they had no COVID19 symptoms' - some patients on forums do not recognise the need to self-isolate and feel that 'cancer was already enough to worry about'  - a high level of anxiety and uncertainty - rampant levels of incorrect or unhelpful information  And we have no reason to believe that this would be dif