In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Modi-led Indian occupation regime is indifferent to the increasing number of cancer patients in the terri-tory.
IIOJK has been witnessing a surge in number of cancer patients with data showing that there are 26,366 patients affected by the disease. In Kashmir alone, according to a study titled `Epidemiology of Cancers in Kashmir: An Analysis of Hospital Data’ by doctors Mariya A Qureshi and others, stomach cancer cases were the most, followed by colorectal cancer (16.4%) and lung cancer (13.2%). Between 2010 and 2016, the number of cancer cases at Soura Medical Institute increased from 1,400 to 4,300.
Experts said that decades after the diagnosis and treatment of cancer was developed, Kashmir is still far away from treating the terminal disease in an effective way. And this is not because of lack of capable doctors, but because of lack of infrastruc-ture, both in private and public sector hospitals, the reason being the Modi regime’s indifferent attitude to the health of the Kashmiri people.
About 21,000 patients have died due to cancer since 2018, with 6,800 patients in 2018, 700 in 2019, and nearly 7,200 in 2020, the study found.
Why people are dying of cancers in Jammu and Kashmir, Dr Sameer Koul, an oncologist with over three decades of experience in treating cancer pa-tients, said that the recovery rate is low in J&K be-cause the diagnosis happens at a later stage of can-cer, when the treatment remains mostly ineffective. He said that 80 percent of cancers are detected at late stages.
“If the diagnosis of cancer happens at the earlier stage, the recovery rate gets better. Here patients come when they are mostly at the third stage of the cancer. They should have been diagnosed earlier, which is possible only when there is preventive oncology. It is at this stage when the disease can be found and treated. But that does not happen in Kashmir,” he said.
Besides diagnosis, according to Dr Koul, the lack of facilities is another issue. “We have PET scans but they are not enough to meet the patient load. Soura hospital and Government Medical Col-lege are not able to keep up and people have to wait for treatment. This proves dangerous,” said the sen-ior oncologist.
A growing number of cancer cases has been re-ported from three districts of north Kashmir: Bara-mulla, Kupwara and Bandipora. The three districts have recorded a total of 21 percent of cancer pa-tients in Kashmir division, according to a popula-tion-based cancer registry available at Soura Medi-cal Institute. But there is no facility for treating such patients at a dedicated oncology department at Gov-ernment Medical College Baramulla.—KMS
