Late Cancer Detection Remains India's Bane

Late Cancer Detection Remains India's Bane

When India cruised past Japan to emerge the third largest economy behind the US and China, the nation swelled with pride. There’s another race India is engaged with China, one it would not want to win, for the tag of the largest cancer destination in the world. With 10 lakh cancer patients getting added every year and seven lakh dying of it, India surely would be wary of pulling close to China which accounted for over 3 million new cases and 2.2 million deaths thereof. From 14 million new cancer patients getting added globally in 2012 and 8.2 million dying of the disease, it is estimated that there will be a 70 per cent rise by 2032, with an estimated 22 million new cases and 13 million deaths a year.

The Indian medical fraternity has reason to fear the one million new cases a year may be the tip of the iceberg as a high percentage of cases do not enter in the cancer registry in most states. While the exact growth is thus under a cloud of under-reporting, it is the bottom line that well and truly worries the authorities. Because, cancer related deaths in India, as in China or other emerging economies, are very much high due to late detection.

According to oncology experts, we as a country are reeling under the double onslaught of late detection and, as a natural corollary, the huge waste of costly medicines that would be effective if detection were to happen at an early stage. For a country like India, this not only proves to be a waste of the precious drug, but also leads to an unnecessarily costly treatment regimen, of advanced stage cancer that more often than not is like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. It is critical to address cancer as a curable disease by putting in place early detection mechanisms at the primary health care level onwards. Secondly, equip doctors at district-level hospitals with palliative care skills to take care of the terminally ill.