In his Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Emperor of All Maladies, oncologist-author Siddhartha Mukherjee calls cancer the “defining plague of our generation”. A rather morbid description of a disease that until recently trailed infectious diseases, particularly in India, in garnering public policy attention, but is now inching up on the government’s agenda.
(This story appears in the 17 June, 2011 issue of Forbes India. You can buy our tablet version from Magzter.com. To visit our Archives, click here.)
It's a pity that cancer cases are rising and even this little bit that the govt announced to do is not done yet. And drugs alone will not make a dent. Look at the hospitalization cost specially when half the family has to live with the patient either inside or outside the hospital. Everybody should visit a large cancer hospital and see the slum like scene outside the gates, be it a govt place like Tata memorial or a private hospital like Apollo in Hyderabad. Nobody talks about opening more affordable hospitals. Media should also highlight the incidence or care of various types of cancer. Urban India witnesses a big song and dance about breast cancer every year in october but what about stomach, kidney and head and neck cancers which I suspect is among the highest anywhere? Apparently one cancer case is detected in India every 5 seconds!
on Mar 31, 2012I think cancer drugs in the list are old drugs, many of which are already reasonably priced. Can govt do something about the effective new drugs, which don't compromise the quality of life and prolong a patients life by a good number of years? A dose of breast cancer drug herceptin costs over a lakh and one needs 18 such doses. Sure this drug is not effective in all cases, one needs genetic testing to take this but still, imagine a middle class family shelling out Rs 20 lakhs for one round of treatment. Cancer by itself kills people, its cost of treatment kills the family as well.
on Jun 11, 2011