Huge scope for collaborative efforts towards affordability and accessibility of cancer care in India: Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, GoI

Jun 12, 2023

GANDHINAGAR, 12 June 2023: Mr Vishal Chauhan, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Govt of India, on Saturday highlighted the profound burden of cancer on the society and shared that recently continuum of care, post-screening, has emerged as a significant challenge, which necessitates urgent action. He also expressed that while the government has launched programs for infrastructure creation and treatment provisioning, there is a huge scope for collaborative efforts towards affordability and accessibility of cancer care in the country.

Addressing Regional Roundtable - Road Map for Making Cancer Care Affordable and Accessible in India’, organized by FICCI, jointly with the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Govt of India, Mr Chauhan added that the Parliamentary Standing Committee on health and family welfare in its 139^th report has made several recommendations on cancer care for which all stakeholders need to work together. He also urged the oncologists to work with ICMR to develop standard treatment guidelines on various types of cancers to help in the better outcomes and ensure that these protocols are followed across facilities.

Mr Chauhan also advised FICCI to garner support from industry through the CSR funds. He suggested that an online portal needs to be created where the states can register their requirements at various levels of cancer infrastructure and industry could volunteer to provide funds or resources in their interest areas.

Dr R Dixit, Additional Director (Medical Education), Govt of Gujarat shared various initiatives in the cancer care domain by the Gujarat government including monetary subsidy for cancer infrastructure, free cancer treatment under school health program, incentives for specialists to work in periphery areas etc. He also shared that Gujarat has a radiotherapy department in all 6 medical colleges and recently day care centres for chemotherapy have been initiated in all district hospitals with Gujarat Cancer Research Institute (GCRI). He further expressed that we need to focus on preventive oncology as well as palliative care and industry will have a large role to play in these areas.

Mr Raj Gore, Co-Lead, FICCI Task Force Cancer Care and CEO, Healthcare Global Enterprises Limited (HCG) shared that surge in incidence of various types of cancers coupled with sub-optimal mortality to incidence ratio, low affordability of treatment and poor quality of a survivor’s life in the country is taking gradual shape of an impending health crisis. Last year alone more than 8 Lakh Indians were estimated to have lost their lives to cancer, 1.5 times total lives lost to Covid-19 pandemic. He further expressed that it is time for taking concerted effort to contain and control the imminent cancer epidemic, taking cognizance of which FICCI constituted a Task Force on cancer care in 2022 with an aim to bring all stakeholders together and work towards making cancer care affordable and accessible in India.

Dr Kumar Prabhash, Medical Oncologist, Tata Memorial Centre, Muzaffarpur (HBCH & RC) shared the unique example of PPP where a tertiary hospital is working closely and successfully with the district hospital. The screening is followed by confirmation of cancer which helps in the continuum of care. The government is encouraging other States to follow this model too.

Ms Srimayee Chakraborty, Partner-Healthcare, EY Business Consulting, India, highlighted that, Western states (Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa and Rajasthan) account for close to 15 per cent of total incidence. Outcomes measured as Mortality to Incidence ratio in the Western states is higher at 42 per cent compared to all India average of 32-33 per cent highlighting the graveness of the situation. Hence, there is a need to tailor make interventions for cancer care by geographic region in India through a deep understanding of the local nuances which characterizes the disease burden and the state of clinical outcome in the specific geography.

The Roundtable was attended by various experts from the oncology sector, including senior clinicians, hospital administrators, diagnostics, insurers, Medtech and pharma companies. It was deliberated that the key focus should be to ensure there is maximisation of reach and coverage in terms of a) awareness and prevention – modifying exposure to risk factors that potentially lead to cancer; b) detection and diagnosis - ensuring early detection and accurate staging of the disease and c) treatment including palliative care - multidisciplinary approach to treatment with focus on affordability, equitable access, quality of outcomes and palliative care. At the same time, we need to make efforts towards standardizing care pathways and using them as a reference point for designing reimbursement packages within the region and across the nation will be key to ensuring that patients are offered equitable choice for treatment which is agnostic to the location or type of facility selected.

Further, it was discussed that there is a need for expanding cancer registries and health information systems for collecting standardised and comprehensive data which will enable evidence-based policy decisions and research specially in states such as Rajasthan and lay the groundwork for long term success in this direction.

Earlier, the FICCI-EY Report 2022 (attached), developed under FICCI Task Force on Cancer Care Infrastructure highlighted that it is imperative that the country focuses on effective prevention, targeted screening, and large-scale awareness as the primary response to addressing the disease burden by avoiding the unnecessary stigma attached to cancer.