At the governance level, cancer is clubbed with diabetes, heart disease, and stroke vying in a common programme that gets only 20 per cent of the health expenditure despite being the cause of 60 per cent of all deaths. Our cancer patients struggle to get adequate palliative treatment when they are sick. There aren’t enough radiotherapy machines, trained technicians, oncologists or cancer nurses in India. Cancer is not treated in most district-level hospitals, and often cancer patients and their families sell their homes, lands and assets to come to cities for treatment. It is diagnosed very late in India, which is why only 30 per cent of cancer patients survive five years after diagnosis. Cancer is the third-largest cause of death in our country after cardiovascular disease and chronic respiratory diseases. There are almost 1.4 million new cancer cases, expected to rise to two million by 2040. India is undergoing an epidemiological transition - non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes, hypertension, kidney disease and cancer have overtaken the infectious disease burden.
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