LAUSR

Abstract The incidence and mortality due to malignancies are increasing in Romania. Since 2001, Romania provides the public support for cancer patients through the National Programme for Cancer (NPC). Using documentary analysis, the present paper provides a longitudinal and comprehensive examination of all the policy documents issued during 2001 and 2016 within the programme, and of the five implementation reports available. The paper examines several press articles as a sole source for exploring implementation difficulties. Results show that current cancer policies in Romania are focusing on treatment and screening, less on prevention, surveillance, research and rehabilitation and not at all on palliative care. Despite the NPC development in the period considered, substantial difficulties hinder the achievement of the full potential of the programme. The analysis reveals an erratic vision underpinning the cancer programme and a complete lack of objective measures of the NPC results. Four lessons are derived from this analysis and can inform cancer policies in similar national contexts: the implementation of cancer registries for a better planning of cancer policies, involving other actors (such as NGOs) in the fight against cancer, the necessity for having objective assessments of the status of policy implementation and the need to include measures of palliation in the future policies.