Cancer Patient Care and its Medical Management in India: the Impact During Covid-19 and Government Funding Assistance

Abstract

Cancer is emerging as a major public health concern for the entire globe. According to the World Cancer Report, cancer is the world's second most common cause of death. This poses a rapidly increasing threat worldwide to individuals, health systems and economies.Cancer patients are more susceptible to critical illness and death as compared to the general infected population. Various cohort studies were conducted in China between December 2019 to June 2020;it was inspected that among overall cancer patients admitted in hospital during the pandemic, 79% were Covid-19 Positive among which 39% died in ICU;whereas among all general population admitted to the same hospital 37% were Covid positive out of which 8% died. It suggests that the cancer patients are at more risk due to Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. In order to prevent 7 million cancer deaths over the next decade, countries must expedite their health care system. In low-income and middle-income countries,during the next decade, the incidence of cancer is expected to almost double.In 2018 India had about 1.16 million cancer cases, 784800 cancer deaths amongits population of 1.35 billion people. Furthermore, the treatment cost for more than 40% of cancer hospitalization is made by selling the assets and borrowing from relatives;they incur out-of-pocket (OOPE) expenditure in the private sector and can cost more than 20 percent of their annual per capita household spending.And over 76% of cancer patient families faced financial problems during treatment. The main aim objective of the study was to understand the cancer scenario in India, its treatment cost implications and various treatment facilities and different funding assistance cum Health schemes implemented by central and state governments in India.The data is collected from secondary sources and descriptive study was performed. Therefore in conclusion we find that, we require effective prevention for surviving against cancer along with the proper awareness of the funding schemes by the government for the cancer patients and greater investment in the healthcare infrastructure needs proper attention.