The press meet of Max Institute of Cancer Care has once more highlighted some hard truths regarding cancer’s overwhelming presence in Northeast in general and Arunachal in particular. A series of figures have been shared which show that as compared to the rest of the country, in this region, cancer is proving to be a very hard nut to crack. But amidst this ‘red alert’ what is heartening is that there will now be efforts to tame this dreaded disease in state through a series of awareness programmes coupled with the services of an upcoming telemedicine facility. These efforts will at least take the fight to a little more aggressive level and thus deserve compliments.

The word cancer is itself like a demon and over the last century or more the disease has been a leading cause of death globally with one in six due to it and in India it’s still a continuing battle. Coming to the NE, medical fraternity and researchers had been issuing cautions as early from 2012 that cancer in this region is on rise and will be a great threat in approaching decades. This has actually been corroborated by multiple sets of data from government and well as private sources and there is already a phrase doing rounds that Northeast is the ‘Cancer capital of India’. Several reasons have been cited time and again and the primary ones are a mix of lifestyle choices, low awareness and late detection. Apart from this, the task of fight-back becomes more onerous as there is an acute lack of expert oncologists and a stark deficiency of adequate treatment infrastructure such as specialised hospitals, diagnostic centres, etc. It’s either Mumbai or Bengaluru or elsewhere or a sure and fast-approaching death. But specific to NE, it has been proven repeatedly by research that the disease can be suppressed to a great extent if a marked alteration can be brought in certain consumption habits of the people. Tobacco, very correctly has been singled out as the foremost villain and it’s excessive consumption in various forms through smoking & chewing along with raw and fermented betel nuts containing carcinogenic substances are the acknowledged ‘harbingers’ of cancer. The battle ahead will no doubt be tough and only cumulative efforts from government, medical organizations, NGOs and civil society can take the awareness propagation efforts to desired levels. It’s still paradoxical that the region inclusive of Arunachal which is under the highest degree of cancer threat is the most ill-equipped when it comes to treatment delivery and thus there must be immediate efforts to make amends. 

Current figures are unsettling to the core. If the situation is still overlooked, it’s definite that these figures will turn out to be more heart-wrenching within next few years.