This year, the theme on world cancer day is “Close the Care Gap-Everyone Deserves Access to Cancer Care”. I was fascinated to know the theme. It means a lot. By virtue of working at different big hospitals of the country and abroad, I had the opportunity to see a whole spectrum of available cancer care in this world. Secondary to that opportunity, the “GAP” was also quite evident to me.
In this world, few people are trying to diagnose (and probably treat also) cancer even before they are apparent. Millions of dollars are being spent. In that same world, thousands of cancer patients are waiting for months to get a basic radiation treatment to relieve their excruciating cancer pain because of lack of access to caner care! And you don’t need to travel thousands of miles to see that.
Worldwide, number of new cancer cases are increasing. In 2020, the world has registered almost 20 million new cancer cases. Unfortunate enough, almost 10 million people died in the same year from cancer (half of new cases)! In India, the numbers of new cases and deaths were almost 13 lakhs and 8.5 lakhs (more than half)! There is a huge gap.
With advancements in technologies, cancer detection, treatment and complication management have become much better. Still there are so many things to do. We need to educate people to reach a health facility on detection of some unusual symptoms. We need to close the gap where diagnosis and investigations will not lead to loss of vital time to treat a curable cancer making it incurable. We need to close the wide gap in quality of care across the globe and country. We need to close the wide gap in available infrastructure across the world. We need to close the financial gap where every people on earth can access a basic standard cancer care!
To be continued