In China, as elsewhere, battle against cancer an uphill task
The international day to raise awareness about cancer was marked on Feb 4.
Cancer is increasingly commonplace, and the ultimate cure has yet to be found.
At least that is what most people believe, unless, of course, you pay attention to conspiracy theories that suggest big pharma is hiding relevant research from the masses in order to keep medicine prices at exorbitant levels. This seems farfetched also because a break- through can change humanity.
But even with what we know, the disease management landscape is complex.
The elderly, who cannot afford the backbreaking expense of a long-drawn battle against cancer or are not physically prepared for the onslaught of medicinal side effects, typically opt out of aggressive treatment that anyway does not guarantee the addition of a few more years — even months — to their lives.
Desperate for a cure, patients also embrace pseudoscience.
As in many other countries, cancer is a major public health issue in China, where an official report said around 4.29 million cases occur each year. The demand for doctors remains. The World Health Organization estimates there is one general practitioner for every 6,666 people in China, compared with the world figures of one for 1,500 to 2,000 people.
The Chinese film Dying to Survive was a big hit last year. Its making was inspired by the real-life story of a Chinese leukemia patient who smuggled cancer medicine from India for some other patients in China. India produces relatively cheaper generic anti-cancer drugs. China does not import such medicine from India.
The government recently included 17 anti-cancer drugs, mostly imported, in the national medical insurance list. This is expected to cushion treatment costs in the country.
China said a medicine it has manufactured to treat the relapse of a cancer has been recognized through the publication of the clinical trial results in a journal of The Lancet.
A professor from the Cancer Hospital, affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, led the “clinical research which enrolled 96 patients with relapsed or refractory classic Hodgkin’s lymphoma from 18 hospitals” in the country, the National Health Commission website citing media, said.
Although the cure rate of early treatment is high for this disease, patients have a 20 percent chance of a recurrence, it added.
Unrelated, a study by The Lancet in 2012 predicted an increase in the incidence of all cancer cases globally from 12.7 million new cases in 2008 to 22.2 million by 2030.
China’s population growth has reached the lowest in decades, which could mean more elderly cancer patients in future, as age and cell mutation tend to coexist, besides the presence of external risks such as cigarette consumption and pollution.
In his Pulitzer-winning book, The Emperor of All Maladies, the US oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee wrote, “Malignant growth and normal growth are so genetically intertwined that unbraiding the two might be one of the most significant scientific challenges faced by our species.
“Cancer is built into our genomes: the genes that unmoor normal cell division are not foreign to our bodies, but rather mutated, distorted versions of the very genes that perform vital cellular functions.”
A cure will be found when someone demonstrates how to stop such cell mutations or contain them without harming the rest of the body.