Cancer is considered one of the most dreaded diseases in India. Its treatment is extremely expensive, and the reckless profiteering by doctors recently prompted the Supreme Court of India to take notice, stating that selling injections worth thousands of rupees for lakhs is a grave injustice. Another concern for the country is that approximately 50,000 children are diagnosed with cancer every year. There is a lack of good hospitals for their treatment, and chemotherapy is very expensive.
Consequently, it is estimated that 60 percent of families with children battling cancer must travel more than two hours daily to receive proper treatment. Among the poorest families, more than 32,000 families are forced to travel from their villages to cities for their children’s treatment, due to the unequal availability of pediatric cancer centers. According to a study published in the British journal Cancer Policy, the poor and their children mostly live in villages and towns, while cancer hospitals are located in metropolitan cities. Therefore, these families must travel to reach them, creating additional challenges for housing and food.
While children in the US can reach a cancer specialist in 20 minutes and in Japan in 37 minutes, in India it takes two hours. The hardship is greatest in eastern and central India, where families must travel to other states for their children’s treatment. Of all pediatric cancer patients in South Asia, 68 percent live in India, yet the country faces a severe shortage of radiotherapy machinery. There is an average of one or two radiotherapy machines per million patients. The journal reported that data on children receiving treatment between 2005 and 2019 showed that Uttar Pradesh had the highest number of children receiving treatment, accounting for 22.6 percent of the total. Other states with the highest number of pediatric cancer patients were Delhi, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh. The study also revealed that in India, boys are more likely to develop cancer, while girls are less likely. Furthermore, cancer in these children often arises from tumors, including bone, brain, kidney, and muscle cancers. These require complex surgery and laser treatment, resulting in higher mortality rates.