The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science, Technology, and Environment said that India has “highly inadequate” cancer care infrastructure which forces a majority of patients to travel “thousands of kilometres” for treatment. The committee was constituted to examine an expanded role of the Department of Atomic Energy to address India’s rising cancer burden.
Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2019
The inadequate infrastructure fails to address the needs of patients and contributes to a 20% higher mortality among Indian cancer patients than those in countries with a high Human Development Index (HDI). In India, the rate stands at 0.68 which is higher than that in countries with very high HDI (at 0.38) and high HDI countries (0.57). The number of newly diagnosed cases of cancer annually is about 16 lakh. Around 8 lakh people die annually due to cancer.
The incidence of cancer is very high in all North Eastern States (higher than the national average) for several types of cancer, showing a consistently rising trend over the past few decades. The International Agency for Research on Cancer expects cancer deaths in India to rise from 8.8 lakh in 2018 to 13 lakh in 2035. The report highlights the significance of India’s National Cancer Grid which is the prominent centre for cancer treatment in the country. It treats over 7,00,000 new cancer cases.
