On Thursday September 24, the Embassy participated in a conference on prevention of cervical cancer and early diagnosis of precancerous lesions, in Hotel Le Meridien outside of Vilnius. The event was organised as a part of the National Centre of Pathology project “Improvement of competence of the National Centre of Pathology in the area of early diagnosis and prevention of cancer”, funded by the European Economic Area and the Norwegian Financial Mechanisms. The conference lasted for two days, bringing together an international medical research environment.
The seminar offered a broad and international approach to the subject matter, through medical researchers from Finland, Belgium, Lithuania, the United States and the United Kingdom. The introductory speech was held by Professor Arvydas Laurinavicius, Director of the National Centre of Pathology and Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Vilnius University. His introduction to the EEA project “Early breast, cervical and colorectal cancer detection” was prepared together with Professor Jahn Nesland from the University of Oslo, who was unable to attend. This project is a partnership between the National Centre of Pathology in Lithuania and the University of Oslo, Norway. The purpose is to increase the competencies of the employees of the National Centre of Pathology in new methods of diagnostics of cancer related diseases, and to implement new analysis methods, with the overall objective of improving diagnostics of breast, cervical and colorectal cancer in Lithuania.
The lectures in the conference covered international, regional and local approaches to the topic of discussion. During the initial part of the conference, the situation in the Baltic countries in general and Lithuania in particular was discussed. It became clear that the prevention and early diagnosis of cancer in Lithuania is lagging behind in a European context, and that it could be improved by the focus of the EEA-funded project.