Click to play videoNew Delhi: Most cancer patients in India reel under the pressure of expensive treatment. The very diagnosis of this incurable disease spells worries for a cancer patient’s family. What hits them even harder is the exorbitant amount of money charged by the pharma companies for the drugs that are crucial for a cancer patient’s survival at an advanced stage.
Most American pharma companies producing and selling these drugs in India have a patent over them. The patients have no choice but to pay the market price since none of the Indian companies are producing those medicines here. Although the Indian government does provides free / subsidized treatment at the cancer centres, a patient has to go for expensive advanced-level treatment to increase his chances of survival.
CNN-IBN citizen journalist Tanweer Alam brings up the plight of the middle-class families of cancer patients in India—who battle death, cancer and the financial crunch of an expensive life-saving treatment.
Tanweer has been paying Rs 1,30,000 for each dose of medicines. The cost—to average Indian family—means putting together 12-years of earnings to slightly improve a cancer patient’s chances of survival.
Is the cost of cancer treatment prohibitively high for the average Indian?
Tanweer a bright management professional from IIM was diagnosed with cancer when he was at the helm of his career. The 23-year-old decided to fight the disease. He tried to find out what are his chances of survival. “It was extremely difficult for me. I was trying to set up a small firm of my own when the cancer diagnosis hit me. All my finances were exhausted in the treatment. I am depending upon my father to get the funds for the treatment. It is extremely difficult for a middle-class family to afford cancer treatment,” he says.
The pharma companies are patent-protected and are under no pressure to lower down the prices of the cancer drugs. In that case, the onus lies on the government to do something to make these drugs available at affordable prices.
“The prices of these crucial drugs are much above the purchasing capacity of the patients who comes from a middle-class Indian family. The price at which these drugs are being sold might be affordable in America. But in India, it is beyond the reach of most needy patients,” said Tanweer.
The pharma companies are selling the medicines at the US price. Since they are the only ones producing the drug, the patient has no other option but pay the price.
Harmala Gupta—a cancer survivor and President of CanSupport, an NGO for cancer patients says it is the middle class families that are the most squeezed in such cases.
The high cost of the treatment and lack of resources prompts the economically weak families to give up in most cases. And the middle class family goes through testing times as it pulls savings and funds to pay for the treatment.
“There is no where that they can turn to. They have to ultimately depend on their own resources and very often it means selling off even the roof over your head,” said Harmala Gupta.
“It’s a horrible situation for a family that has to maintain a certain standard of living while bearing the huge crunch of resources. It’s like going out to the wolves. Sometimes it’s not really the cancer that you are fighting, but it’s a double whammy because you are also trying to gather resources to put up a fight,” she added.
Treatment is available but the medicines are in scarce supply
Chemotherapy—one of the medical therapies for cancer treatment—is available at affordable prices across the cancer hospitals In India. However, the drugs that support this therapy cost over a lakh for a single dosage.
“Chemotherapy is one form of treatment that is widely available at an affordable cost. Now if I want to increase my chance of survival from 50 per cent to say 75 per cent—I need something else like monoclonal antibody, which is an expensive drug. I cannot leave my chance of survival at 50 per cent. In order to maximize my chances I will have to shell out huge amounts of money,” said Tanweer.
If better medical insurance cover is provided to the cancer patients, would it help? “Not really,” said Harmala Gupta. “The cancer insurance plans cover Chemotherapy drugs to a very limited extent. Even with the insurance cover you are not going be compensated for the full amount of the treatment,” she added.
Harmala said with an aggressive treatment and higher doses of drugs that kills the cancer cells you stand better chance of recovery. But for that to happen you need some adjuvant treatments to maintain a level where the treatment itself doesn’t become life threatening.
Thus for the treatment not to become life threatening, you need other treatments. “These adjuvant drugs which are crucial for you to stay alive come extremely expensive,” she said.
The only silver lining is that India’s premier pharma company Dr Reddy has now started manufacturing one of the cancer drugs that was unavailable in India. The company is started producing the medicine last month.
“There is now one drug that Dr Reddy is manufacturing which is much less expensive and equally efficient. I have been taking it and the medicine costs half the American drug,” said Tanweer.
There is hope for cancer patients battling for survival in India. What’s crucial is government aid to help those battling for life. “I hope pharma companies come up with more economical drugs. I hope we get the drugs they sell in the US at a little affordable price considering the economic capacity of the people in India,” Tanweer concluded.
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