Obituary

Carmen Martinez (1943 – 2022)

We mourn our friend and colleague Dr. Carmen Martinez, who passed away on the 6th of January 2022 in Madrid. Carmen started her career as a medical oncologist in Barcelona in the mid-70s, then her professional interests shifted to cancer epidemiology and prevention, and started working in cancer care planning at the Spanish Health Ministry in Madrid. She then moved to Granada to join the staff of the Escuela Andaluza de Salud Publica, which was established in the mid-80s. Carmen’s efforts were crucial in setting up the Granada Cancer Registry, one of the first five registries in operation in Spain at that time. Carmen Martinez contributed to several multi-centric European studies with data from Granada, right from the first rounds of EU cancer funding for oncological research. Carmen generously collaborated with various national and international professional societies and was President of the GRELL Group from 2000 to 2003. Many colleagues will remember her intelligence, dedication, and the warm hospitality she always offered when our meetings were convened at her Institute and city. Carmen, we miss you already.

Risto Sankila (1958 – 2019)

We belatedly learnt the sad news that our colleague and friend Risto Sankila passed away. After graduating in medicine, Risto joined as junior scientist the team of the Finnish Cancer Registry in Helsinki. He authored a good number of appreciated epidemiological studies, based on the Finnish data, as well as on the Nordic and the European ones. His research interest included childhood cancer, survival analysis at population level, evaluation of screening programs, and clinical epidemiology. At the beginning of this century Risto was appointed Chief Medical Officer at the Finnish Cancer Registry, being very instrumental in organizing the IACR (International Association of Cancer Registries) conference in Helsinki, June 2002. He has been Professor at the Tampere University till 2008. Risto has also been a valuable contributor of several European research consortia such as Eurocare and Eurocourse, and served as member of the Steering Committee of the European Network of Cancer Registry. We will miss his acute intelligence, his deep knowledge of the statistical job, his irony and his warm way of dealing with all of us.

Roberto Zanetti and Jan Willem Coebergh

Turin and Oegstgees, February 2021

 and a personal memory of Jan Willem on the Risto’s PhD thesis, May 1998

“Risto’s thesis, ‘Cancer patient survival: a population-based approach’ (Cancer Society of Finland Publication, No. 60, Helsinki 1998) comprised 5 Finnish Cancer Registry-based studies on neuroblastoma, seasonal variation in incidence, pregnancy and breast cancer survival, hereditary colon cancer and multiple cancers. Each with specific reasearch questions, methodolocial approaches and involvement of a variety of clinicians and the Finnish biostatisticians we all know. His promotors for the thesis were Timo Hakulinen and Lyly Teppo, while I was the opponent. After 1,5 hour of the available 5 we were all exhausted by the intensity of the discussion, and getting thirsty and hungry of course. A delicious and very stylish dinner followed as well as the next day a trip to a house near a lake with a  sauna and photographs being taken which have still not reached the internet.

Because Risto mastered thus also the subject of survival analysis he went to Lyon and did a lot of work for  the European Network of Cancer Registries, among other resulting in his editorship of an IARC Technical Publications No. 37 titled : Evaluation of Clinical Care by Cancer Registries (appeared in 2003) with speakers from 9 European countries and a broad range of issues, i.e. aspects of survivorship”