Fighting the Grim Reaper – closing the gap in cancer care in Pakistan

Today, on World Cancer Day we recognize the global struggle against cancer, a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. The known burden of cancer in Pakistan is enormous with nearly 200,000 new patients each year. The true burden is certainly higher, as many cases are never detected or treated. This year’s theme “closing the gap in care” underscores the need for comprehensive efforts to prevent, diagnose, and treat patients with cancer.

The first step in closing the gap remains prevention. Adequate screening enables timely treatment, allowing it to be more effective and less complex with a higher survival rate. However, accessibility to screening services remains limited. One solution is expanding public-private partnerships that focus on creating equitable screening programmes based on risk factors such as age and gender. Given that Breast Cancer, which is highly amenable to screening, is also the most common cancer in Pakistan, the dividends from investing in screening would be manifold.

Once a cancerous condition is detected, adequate treatment is necessary.

It is heartening that there are at least 26 well-established multidisciplinary academic centers in Pakistan, where teams of interdisciplinary doctors, nurses and specialists provide treatment to cancer patients. The issue is that we do not have enough of these centers. Access to such centers along with growth in their numbers is necessary to allow patients to receive the needed holistic treatment they deserve, including palliative care when required.

Another crucial step in lowering the cancer burden is monitoring and surveillance through registries. Several population-based cancer registries (PBCRs) developed globally, allow for the capture of morbidity, mortality and post-treatment outcomes at follow-up. We need to further strengthen registries that have been initiated in Pakistan as they are pivotal to developing tangible solutions. Whilst the fight against cancer remains tough worldwide, we have the knowledge of solutions that will make a big difference in Pakistan. By applying these through collective effort, we can close these gaps in care, save lives and positively impact our communities.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024