The international Cancer Patient Coalition (ICPC) was founded out of respect for human dignity to contribute to alleviation of suffering of cancer patients and their loved ones.
The Statutes of M-SHIELD must be interpreted in light of the following:
The movement’s governing bodies aim at promoting the best possible implementation of ICPC’s mission, recognizing independence of action while ensuring coordination, accountability and standards of care.
ICPC’s governance is based on the plurality of operations so as to encourage quality, relevance and innovation in the implementation of its mission.
Ensuring independence
The independence of ICPC is characterised above all by the independence of spirit that is a condition for effective analysis and action. It allows freedom of choice in its operations, and in the duration and means of carrying them out.
This independence is displayed at both the level of the organisation at the international level and each of its regional bodies.
M-ICPC aims for strict independence from all structures or powers, whether political, religious, economic or other.
The concern for independence is also financial. ICPC endeavours to ensure a maximum of private resources, to diversify its institutional donors, and, sometimes, to refuse financing that may affect its independence.
From their side, ICPC activities and volunteers are expected to be discreet and will abstain from linking or implicating ICPC politically, institutionally or otherwise through personal acts or opinions.
Taking into account the local – Local is Global
Experience in different contexts has exposed the delusion that transfer of knowledge and techniques from the practice of wealthy countries is able to overcome obstacles to care.
Even when the challenges faced by cancer patient in one territory resemble those found in another, differences of wealth or development mean that the life circumstances are so radically distinct for both patient and caregiver that sensitively-adapted innovations, protocols and practices are required. In addition, certain pathologies are confined to populations who rarely constitute a focus for research and development.
To contribute to overcoming these barriers, ICPC will learn to adapt, campaign for, and find innovative solutions to improve the mental health care interventions for patients in its programs and beyond.
ICPC affirms its willingness to pursue essential innovation and to continue to undertake initiatives in the constant search for relevant and effective action, with the fundamental aim to ensure that the patients live their best life. Consequently, different approaches and operational strategies can naturally co-exist within the ICPC movement. Since that diversity of action within the framework of ICPC ’s common purpose and ambition is integraal to improving its operations, different operational strategies can and should be implemented at national and international levels.
Transparency in policy engagement
ICPC will make the results and critiques of its actions public, and analyze and document its actions and any obstacles (be they medical, political, economic, or whatever else) preventing patients in its programs from access to quality care, underlining the necessity for change. This can, and at times should, contribute to elements of a response at the national, regional and international level
The movement’s governing bodies aim at promoting the best possible implementation of ICPC’s mission, recognizing independence of action while ensuring coordination, accountability and standards of care.
