The Melanoma Independent Community Advisory Board has published a white paper with a call to action around policy-related changes to improve the melanoma management landscape for patients.

They state: "Melanoma is on the rise, and is killing thousands of European citizens that could be saved. But saving lives requires European action. Now.

The principal need is for greater collaboration between Member States and across the healthcare sector, including patient representatives, with wider recognition of melanoma as a European healthcare problem, and an agreed approach to tackling it.

At present, effective treatments are lacking, and even where potential treatments exist, getting them to patients is complicated by European and national rules on authorisation, pricing, reimbursement and prescription. Research is insufficient, and handicapped by inadequate funding, the stringency of data protection rules, lack of coordination, and outdated clinical trial requirements.

And patients are largely excluded from critical aspects of the discussions on melanoma treatment. So it is necessary to ease access to innovative treatments - including via better funding, greater recognition of the value to society as a whole of successful treatment, and elimination of inequalities in care.

It is also necessary to boost research - by making the regulatory environment more conducive, by greater cross-border collaboration, and by providing more attractive incentives and facilities for investment, And patients must be Included in melanoma policy formation.

They should be formally represented in regulatory and funding organisations, be involved in clinical trial design, and be provided as a right with fuller information about developments in research and treatment. And patients must be given a greater say in their own care.

Efficient and effective action for melanoma patients depends on a coherent European strategy, and a common approach to mobilising and integrating scarce and scattered resources. This white paper sets out the principal actions needed."

You can read the full paper here