Hundreds of cancer patients in Punjab had little to console themselves with on the International Cancer Day on Saturday except that the state government released an advertisement in the newspaper reiterating that registration of cancer patients in the state had become mandatory.
The state governor had issued the notification in November last year, which the government could at best remind the patients of. As if the government was in a limbo after the polling, no awareness camps or medical treatment facilities were especially organised on the day for the patients, who are mostly poor farmers in the Malwa region.
It is commonly observed that patients fail to detect cancer at early stages due to ignorance about its symptoms.
More than a dozen districts in the region are densely afflicted with the disease where the number of cancer patients ran into thousands.
While the state has yet to undertake a comprehensive exercise to determine the exact number of patients, it has made it mandatory for doctors in the state to register the patients.
According to an NGO in Bathinda, the number of cancer patients was almost8000 per one lakh of population, annually. High degree of toxicity in the underground water was stated to be the main cause of cancer spreading in the region.
Meanwhile, the state’s department of water supply and sanitation said high concentration of uranium was noticed in 241 out of a total of 1,260 water samples gathered from various districts of the state.
The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, has been entrusted with the task of finding out whether the presence of this radioactive material is responsible for the high prevalence of cancer in the Malwa region.
On a public interest petition, the Punjab and Haryana high court has sought the BARC’s opinion to ascertain the causes of high uranium presence and its relation to the high cancer prevalence in the area.
Comments