Medical community may be partly responsible for cancer misery

doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7399.1146

BMJ 2003;326:1146 (24 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7399.1146

Letter

Medical community may be partly responsible for cancer misery

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—The article by Murray et al prompts me to highlight a less quoted cause of misery of patients with advanced cancer.¹

The World Health Organization estimated that in 2020, 20 millionnew cases of cancer will be diagnosed each year and 75% ofthese will occur in nations that between them have only 5%of resources. India, with only 20 dedicated cancer centresand 13 hospices, has around 3 million patients with cancer at any one time, of whom 80% are incurable.² In India one in10 deaths is related to cancer, and only 3% of the people whoneed palliative care receive it.³

Many patients become victims of alternative medicine practitioners,⁴and those few who escape are required to visit government hospitalsthat are overcrowded and under-funded. Patients with advancedcancer are made to feel less deserving of medical efforts innon-paying settings. They are welcome in . . . [Full text of this article]

P Chaturvedi, assistant surgeon

Department of Surgical Oncology, Tata Memorial Hospital, E B Road, Parel, Mumbai, 400 012, India pankajch37@yahoo.com

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Dying from cancer in developed and developing countries: lessons from two qualitative interview studies of patients and their carers: Scott A Murray, Elizabeth Grant, Angus Grant, and Marilyn Kendall
BMJ 2003 326: 368. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]