Affordable, accessible cancer needed: Dr Sharma

Aurangabad, Feb 4: Though the incidence of cancer in India is lower than the western countries, our huge burden of cases needs early intervention. Treatment should be affordable, easily accessible and awareness should increase, said Prof K S Sharma, Dean, Academics Projects, Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai and Ex-Professor, Department of Anaesthesiology TMC. Lokmat Times spoke to the eminent cancer expert on the eve of the World Cancer Day. Excerpts from the interview.

Q: What is the cancer burden of Tata hospital?

A: Every year, Tata hospital has about 45,000 new cancer cases and nearly 15,000 cases come for the second opinion besides 6 lakh follow-up cases.

Q: What is the Indian scenario?

A: Incidence of cancer is around 90 per 100,000 population. Although lower than in Western countries, our huge burden needs early intervention. Our estimated 1.16 million cancer cases will rise rapidly unless intensive measures are undertaken. By 2030, this may rise to 1.5 million cancer cases.

Q: Common cancers in India?

A: The commonest types are breast and cervical cancer in females and head and neck, lung and stomach cancer among males. All these are preventable - primary prevention (tobacco control, good hygiene of private parts) or secondary prevention (early detection and screening).

Q: Your vision?

A: Mortality rate (61.4 per 100,000) is rather high, mainly because patients present late. Treatment should be affordable, easily accessible, awareness should increase, risk factors and and screening programmes should be implemented even in remote areas.

Q:What is Distributed Cancer Care model?

A: Distributed cancer care model will work on the hub and spokes model, where one larger hospital will cover one or two smaller centres. A patient can be worked up at the large centre and then referred to a small centre close to his hometown for chemotherapy and radiation.

Q: How do you plan to improve services across the country?

A: Networking of all hospitals across the country in a nation-wide cancer grid will augment the availability of trained and qualified manpower and will help to implement in uniform treatment protocol.

Q: What is the decentralising plan of Tata Hospital?

A: Decentralising plan of Tata Hospital means less and less number of patients need to come to Mumbai from North, South and Central part of India by providing the same Tata hospital-like cancer care at Varanasi, Punjab, Vizag, Bihar and Guwahati also.

Q: How do you envisage the future development of State Cancer Institute of Government Medical College Aurangabad?

A: It is expanding very well. With hand-holding and provision of state of the art equipment, postgraduate education facilities, encouraging research - it has a very bright future.

Projected figures of cancer patients in India

Year Male Female Total

20256843946993461383740

20307708297840201554849

20358606898705121731201

20409529649563931909357