COLOMBIA
On August 27, legislator Oscar Villamizar (Centro Democrático – ruling party) presented before the Senate a bill that seeks to establish measures for the prevention, diagnosis, timely treatment, rehabilitation and palliative care of breast cancer. To this end, the initiative states that the State, through the General System of Social Security in Health, will guarantee the supply of examinations, medicines, supplies, medical devices and in general all the services for the care of the patient. The regulation is expected to be sent to committee in the next few days.
Likewise, in order to guarantee timely care in the treatment of breast cancer, the Benefit Plan Administration Entities (EAPB in Spanish), the exception regimes and the territorial entities must guarantee access to all the services required by the patient, as well as the implementation of telemedicine strategies, home medical care and delivery of medicines at home, among other alternatives.
For its part, the National Health Superintendency will be the entity in charge of inspecting, monitoring and controlling the provisions contained in this law. In turn, departmental, district and municipal health entities will have to generate and communicate alerts in case of non-compliance to the superintendency, so that it may proceed to take the appropriate actions.