Fighting cancer with cheap treatment and screening

Hindustan Times: Cancer is the most feared disease worldwide, and it is even more so in India where treatment outcomes are uncertain because of delayed diagnosis, patchy availability of specialised treatment and long and expensive therapies that most people without health insurance cannot afford.
Cancer continues to be diagnosed in late stages, when treatment is more toxic and expensive.
Cancer treatment, including radiation and chemotherapy not needing hospitalisation, will be covered under Ayushman Bharat’s annual Rs 5 lakh cover being offered to 550 million people.
Along with population-based screening programme for cervical, breast and oral cancers being expanded to all districts, treatment outcomes will improve in places where the services are available and uninterrupted.
Information from the Ayushman Bharat database will add to the knowledge gleaned from 26 population-based and seven hospital-based cancer registries used by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to map the disease across states.
Data collection is a challenge because a high percentage of deaths occur at home without medical treatment. The cause of death in many cases is established based on verbal autopsy, where data collectors ask the family to describe symptoms that preceded the death. But information flow has improved substantially since the first population-basedcancer registry was established in Mumbai in 1963 and the first rural one in Barshi in Maharashtra in 1987.
These registries were quickly expanded to track the heterogeneity in cancer incidence and outcomes across states and between the urban and rural populations.