Since 2008, SIOPE led the preparation of a very important document, the ‘European Standards of care for Children with Cancer’. Widely recognised as a reference document to evaluate progress in drug development, treatment and care in the various paediatric cancer treatment centres all over the continent, the Standards of Care suggest the ideal requirements for every centre specialised in the treatment of children with cancer.

Developed together with Professor Jerzy Kowalczyk, the Polish Ministry of Health and the Polish ‘Communication without Barriers Foundation’, this document has been created after a first Europe-wide survey on the existing national situations of paediatric haemato-oncology wards.  In 2009 paediatric oncologists, parent’s organisations and policy-makers attended a high-level conference in Warsaw, where discussions resulted in a first draft of the ‘Standards of Care’ document, integrated thereafter as a deliverable in the ‘European Partnership for Action Against Cancer’ (EPAAC) project, a unique partnership bringing together stakeholders from the entire cancer continuum in Europe to share knowledge and expertise to prevent and control the burden of cancer.

A SIOPE survey in the EPAAC framework showed that a wide disparity exists in the implementation of these standards of care across different European countries (J. Kowalczyk et al., ‘Towards reducing inequalities: European Standards of Care for Children with Cancer’, EJC, Volume 50, Issue 3, Pages 481-485, February 2014).

The Standards are now available in 22 languages.

Highlights from the Standards include: