February 4 has been established as World Cancer Day on the initiative of the International Union Against Cancer, representing 800 organisations in 155 countries. According to the World Health Organization, cancer is the world's second leading cause of death and, despite continued scientific progress, the disease is expected to soon become the leading cause of death in the European Union.
It is for this reason that Cyprus is invited and must join the other European countries in the framework of the European Cancer Plan, which will operate in parallel with the Horizon Europe programme for cancer, for which €2 billion has already been allocated to fund research projects. This European plan is a milestone in the fight against the disease itself and its social, economic and psychological impact on EU citizens, including by supporting vulnerable groups and developing contingency plans for patient care in the event of future crises. And it becomes particularly relevant today with the huge delays in cancer diagnosis and treatment as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to focus on regional disparities in terms of infrastructure and social imbalances related to employment and gender that make cancer a particularly unequal disease.
The House of Representatives supports any concerted effort to implement a roadmap with performance indicators, realistic timetables and the involvement of social partners and civil society, in line with the European Cancer Plan.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
On 9 February, the commemoration day of the national poet Dionysios Solomos, the Greek state has made a historic decision to celebrate the World Day of the Greek Language on 24 April 2017, in order to highlight its fundamental role over the centuries and its contribution to the consolidation of European and global civilisation. A similar decision was adopted in the same year by the Ministry of Education and Culture of Cyprus, which has since then organised annual events related to the contribution of the Greek language to culture.
The Greek language, with the amazing peculiarity of being preserved unified from Homer to the present day, one of the world's longest-lived languages, with its complexity, vocabulary, syntax and grammar, infuses our thinking and broadens our horizons, It enables us to become citizens with multifaceted critical thinking, while it conveys with admirable clarity the essence of all the creations of human thought since, as it is emphasised, the relationship between the signifier and the signified is causal and not compatible.
Let us not ignore the fact that the Greek language was the language of the Byzantine Empire and of Christian teaching, with an enormous influence on many languages and cultures, forming the basis of important sciences, while in modern times it was the medium of expression of two great Greek poets who were awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Greek language is therefore our cultural heritage and the characteristic that distinguishes us culturally from other peoples, which is why we are called upon to protect it as a universal and timeless value.
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