Cancer is a leading cause of death around the world, according to WHO, which estimates that 84 million people died of this disease between 2005 and 2015 without intervention. Low-income and medium-income countries are harder hit by cancer than the high-resource countries. It is essential to address the world’s growing cancer burden and to work on effective control measures. Most patients, especially from suburban and rural areas, present themselves when in an advanced stage. The major contributing factor for delayed presentation is “ignoring” warning symptoms. The treatment of cancer is increasingly becoming target-specific from what was a “mass-kill” earlier, with the discovery of several cancer cell sensitising techniques. While reckoning the noble services of doctors at the higher order, it is imperative for doctors to accept that they play a vital role in early detection of this deadly disease among ignorant patients. However, the financial considerations still play a major role in the array of expensive investigations and treatments suggested for advanced disease beyond the stage of cure. Years of effort to educate the public that early cancer is not only curable but also preventable and the modern advances has brought many cancers considered fatal and incurable within the ambit of curability. It is everyone’s social responsibility to educate the younger generation about the ways and means to prevent cancer.
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
