Bulgaria loses €80 million of EU funds to fight childhood cancer

Sofia has turned its back on €80 million from the EU Recovery Plan intended for the construction of a proton centre for the treatment of oncological diseases in children, sparking a conflict between the government and doctors.

According to Bulgarian experts who treat oncological diseases, the government has made a “very expensive mistake”.

A proton accelerator is a type of radiation therapy that uses an external beam of protons instead of X-rays to attack only the tumour, making it gentler and more efficient because it preserves healthy adjacent tissues.

The technology is very suitable for children because the radioactive irradiation is in much lower doses than in traditional radiotherapy.

The current government is putting the blame on the previous caretaker government appointed by President Rumen Radev in 2022, saying that the proton centre project had already failed last year.

The Health Ministry told Euractiv Bulgaria that the proton accelerator project remains a priority.

“The unlikelihood of it being financed with funds under the Recovery and Sustainability Plan due to missed deadlines does not mean the project will not be realised. The government has the political will for such a centre to be built for the needs of Bulgarian patients, which will happen with budget funds”, the ministry commented.

However, there are no concrete plans to start construction. At the end of September, the government removed the construction of a proton therapy centre for the treatment of paediatric haematology/oncology patients from the list of projects supported by the Recovery and Resilience Plan, citing its delay by the caretaker government.

Finance Minister Asen Vasilev then explained that the project could not be implemented on time with EU funding and the money should be allocated from the state budget.

The project was initially estimated to cost €95 million, of which €80 million was to come from the Recovery Plan.

Medical professionals and the National Patient Organisation are worried that Bulgaria will lose money from the EU while at the same time, money from Bulgarian taxpayers will be wasted.

The Health Ministry specified that there are already negotiations with Finance Minister Vasilev so the project will not be forgotten.

Desire is there, but hard deadlines

According to the ministry, about 600 patients in Bulgaria need proton therapy per year, but there is no place to get one in any country in the Balkan region.

The treatment is very expensive – it costs more than €20,000 to treat one patient, which is now covered by the National Health Insurance Fund and paid for by Bulgaria to hospitals abroad.

Currently, there are about 30 proton therapy centres operating in 14 countries in Europe – France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Great Britain, Russia, Sweden, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Switzerland.

The one in Bulgary was supposed to be the first in the Balkans.

Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov stressed on 29 September that the government has not given up on the project, although it is about a year late, but because there is a strict deadline of 2026 for the completion of all projects financed under the Recovery Plan, national funding will have to be sought.

However, the question is whether sufficient national funds will be found, as well as how long the delay will be. Public procurement and the necessary procedures cannot take place before funding is found.

In 2022, a group of scientists announced that funding will be sought for a pilot programme to make Burgas in Bulgaria the first and probably the only city in the Balkans where a proton accelerator will operate for the treatment of children with cancer.

They argued that it is unacceptable for an EU member state which has so many good oncologists not to have the necessary equipment for treatment, forcing patients to seek treatment abroad. Varna was also a candidate for such a health centre but the capital, Sofia, was included in the plan for the European Commission.

Experts fume at the government

Professor Veselin Parvanova, the director of the Radiotherapy Clinic in Sofia “Prof. Ivan Chernozemski”, told Euractiv Bulgaria that “the decision to redirect the funding of the proton centre is illogical and political”.

She explained that the hospital was ready to announce a tender to buy a suitable machine but then had an unpleasant surprise from the government.

She said this project was created by medical specialists in 2019 and was published for public discussion, but now it has been dropped without being discussed, neither with the doctors who developed the project nor with the public.

The chairman of the Bulgarian Patient Forum, Ivan Dimitrov, supported the doctors. According to him, “for a government, there should be no higher priority than the health of the people”.

“A minister of finance decides to stop construction and projects related to health care, and the bigger drama is that the Council of Ministers agrees. This means that the government tends to say that healthcare is not a priority,” Dimitrov said.

[By Antonia Kotseva, Krassen Nikolov | Edited by Vasiliki Angouridi/Zoran Radosavljevic]

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