The Latin American – CML Advocates Network region is currently developing an amazing advocacy program with the aim of improving access to medicines, best treatment and monitoring test, for people living with chronic myeloid leukemia in the region.

All those countries members of this region have many common points such as their vast natural resources, their ancient culture and languages and fascinating history. However, Latin America is composed of very different countries and if we closely look at them, we are able to point out substantial differences. In particular, when reviewing pathways of access to basic health care, from the beginning of life to the oldest population, we realize the great influence that socioeconomic status, gender, race, and ethnics extends and whether they are urban or rural residents.

The dramatic health-access inequalities of the population, even greater for chronic patients, have a high impact limiting the social and economical development of people and countries. This project is aiming to show a real photo of the access to CML treatments and monitoring tools’ situation of every single country in the region.

At this stage, Latam is creating a website with updated information including demographic and statistical data, the situation of the national health systems, access to the different drugs to treat CML and information of the local patient organisations.

The information is being collected from both the official sites of each country, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Panamerican Health Organization (PAHO) and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in a way that clearly reflects the reality of the CML patients in the region.

Furthermore, interviews with the different patient advocacy leaders representing CML NGOs are published on the website on a regular basis.

The members of this region are regularly holding online meetings working on specific topics to share common problems, different views, best practices and real issues at a country level as the last one held on October 10th focused on “Out of Pocket Expenses in Health”.

Find out more about this interesting project by visiting the website: hhttps://cml-latam-project.com/cml-latam-project-2020/ available in both Spanish and English languages.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all CML organisations and patient advocates involved in the development of this regional project and especially to the Latam working-group coordinators Jose Castro (Agalemo – Costa Rica), Nelson Brown (FundaLMC – Venezuela), Felipe Tapia (Corporación MaxiVida – Chile) and Fernando Piotrowski (A.L.M.A. Asociación Leucemia Mieloide Argentina – Argentina).