In response to the emerging and horrifying news from Ukraine, we are extremely concerned about the continuing care of people with brain tumours in that country. We are very anxious to make contact with existing brain tumour patients, their families and healthcare professionals in the multi-disciplinary neuro-oncology field who are either based in Ukraine or Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Moldova or Hungary. If you are reading this and you are in any of the above groups of people in these countries, please do let us know.
We are liaising with leading neuro-oncology societies and, in collaboration with them, have issued the following joint statement.
In the meantime, our thoughts and hopes for peace are with everyone caught up in this devastating crisis.
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Dear colleagues,
We are contacting you today on behalf of the following organisations:
- European Association of Neuro-Oncology (EANO)
- Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO)
- International Brain Tumour Alliance (IBTA)
- EURACAN, Domain 10 (the European Reference Network for Rare Adult Solid Tumours, Brain and CNS Tumour Subgroup)
- Asian Society for Neuro-Oncology (ASNO)
- World Federation of Neuro-Oncology Societies (WFNOS)
We write to express our deep regret and worry regarding the crisis in Ukraine. Our thoughts are with all patients, their families/caregivers and healthcare professional colleagues in that country in these terrible days.
The leadership teams of our societies are jointly evaluating which actions can be taken to provide remote support in relation to the care of people with brain tumours and to assist our professional colleagues in connection with the provision of that care. We welcome any insights and feedback by those directly affected by the war in Ukraine and from those in the neighbouring countries. You may contact president@eano.eu or kathy@theibta.org and provide us with any information on what help is needed.
While our societies and organisations are not set up to provide direct medical supplies at this point, we do recommend our members to consider donations to internationally recognized and credible agencies, such as the following:
Médecins Sans Frontières https://www.msf.org
Red Cross https://www.icrc.org/en/who-we-are
UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) https://www.unhcr.org
We sincerely hope that this war comes to an end as soon as possible and we will continuously monitor and assess how our societies and organisations can provide help to the Ukrainian brain tumour community.
Matthias Preusser ,Tracy Batchelor, Kathy Oliver, Enrico Franceschi, Ahmed Idbaih, Ryo Nishikawa and Yong-Kil Hong on behalf of EANO, SNO IBTA, EURACAN Domain 10, ASNO and WFNOS.
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