Govt should take cancer seriously

By Dinesh C Sharma, India Today Online, April 16, 2014

This is a battle that India will have to fight at various levels - at the level of the individual, the society and the government. At stake are several thousands of lives, most of them in productive age groups. Yet there is very little that we are doing currently. The enemy is cancer, which according to latest research is emerging a major killer in India. Nearly ten lakh new cases of cancer are diagnosed in India every year. At any given time, the number of cancer patients is about 25 lakh. The disease claims 6-7 lakh lives every year and most of these deaths are of people in their prime, according to analysis published in journal The Lancet Oncology this past week.

If the problem is so massive, you would expect policy makers and the government to respond with alacrity. But, unfortunately, this has not been the case. Yes, the number of regional cancer centres has gone up substantially in the past few years and some medical colleges have been equipped to deal with cancers as well. Still the gap between demand and supply is huge-and this, in fact, is a major challenge. Just imagine, in a country of 1.2 billion people, we have just 2000 cancer specialists: radiation and medical oncologists. This translates into one specialist for every 5000 newly diagnosed cancer cases. The treatment facilities in cities and metros - both private and public - are overcrowded because there are practically no facilities in rural areas and towns. This adds to the woes of already overburdened patients since cancer being a chronic disease requiring frequent hospital visits and admissions.

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/govt-should-take-cancer-seriously-says-dinesh-c-sharma/1/355937.html

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/govt-should-take-cancer-seriously-says-dinesh-c-sharma/1/355937.html