SERIOUS CRISIS DUE TO UNAFFORDABLE ANTI-CANCER DRUGS

SERIOUS CRISIS DUE TO UNAFFORDABLE ANTI-CANCER DRUGS

I want to bring to your notice a serious situation that has arisen of late due tounaffordability of life saving anti cancer drugs. Every day we see hundreds ofcancer patients being denied life saving anti-cancer drugs as they are beyond themeans of even the so called rich in India. Also we in CPAA are also not able to givethese drugs free to our patients as their cost goes way above our budget. Hence weare seeing everyday hundreds of cancer patients dying even when their cancer iscurable because they cannot afford life saving anti-cancer drugs.

Around 1,00,000 women with a type of breast cancer for example need to be prescribedthe life saving drug Herceptin (Roche) which costs Rs.7 - Rs23 lacs for fulltreatment depending on the stage of the disease and other factors. Same is the typeof money one needs for drug therapy alone for cancers of mouth, throat, ovaries,rectum, stomach, leukemia's etc.

Obviously it means that 98 out of every 100 Indians are destined to die if cancerstrikes them as the cost of treatment is out of their means, there is no governmentsupport as not even 2% of India's population is covered by any health insurance andNGO's like ours are unable to foot the bills of such expensive drugs. As we cannot be silent spectator to these huge number of deaths of cancer patientsdue to unaffordability of life saving anticancer drugs which we think is a nationalemergency which as time goes by and more anticancer drugs get patented will onlybecome worse.

I strongly feel that it is time for us to act. Whether we should seek fromgovernment of India (a) price control on all anti-cancer drugs which areunaffordable (b) grant of Compulsory License under the clause of national emergencyfor all unaffordable anti-cancer patented drugs along with price control onexpensive drugs not patented but yet very expensive. Or may be we need to knock atthe door of courts for justice. I am not sure which route we should take but I amconvinced that it is time to act.

Perhaps creating awareness through use of massmedia about this national emergercy could result in putting pressure on governmentparticularly at the time when elections are very close & could work in our favour.

Please do let me have your views on what we need to do on an urgent basis to stopthis crises situation faced by cancer patients in our country.

Yours Sincerely

Mr. Y. K. Sapru
Founder Chairman & C.E.O.
Cancer Patients Aid Association
Mumbai,India
www.cpaaindia.org