ALBANIA
In Albania the implementation is coordinated by the University of Medicine of Tirana. UMT is a public non-profit university and the biggest Albanian research centre covering all medical and life-sciences, including areas of disease prevention and health promotion, with close links with the Institute of Public Health (IPH), a public non-profit research and university centre that operates as technical branch of Ministry of Health; both led the recently approved 2022-2030 National Cancer Control Plan. IPH provides technical guidance to 36 local Units of Health Care in all districts of the country, while coordinating national cancer registry and other programme databases. UMT and IPH partner with the newly established national agency for management of health care (National Health Care Operator), running all healthcare institutions including 413 primary health care centres and 12 regional hospitals; reaching this way virtually 2.8 million inhabitants for education, prevention and research purposes.
Cancer-related risks factors in their portfolio include:Primary and secondary prevention programme on multiple risk factors, a basic free primary care based medical check-up, a unique large-scale population programme targeting individuals aged 35-70 years70 old addressing alcohol drinking, smoking, nutrition and physical activity, and reaching almost 400,000 individuals yearly; (b) Study of risk factors through participation in international large-scale population-based studies systematically collecting data, such as Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study71, the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) study72, Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS)73, and Albanian Demographic and Health Survey (ADHS)74,75; (c) HPV vaccination programme to be piloted next year; (d) lifestyle risk factors: early screening, prevention and management of for type 2 diabetes and hypertension (which are also cancer risk factors) by participation in DigiCare4You project, which will deliver an inter-sectoral innovative solution involving digital tools.