The government is co-planning with Varian Medical Systems, which is a provider of radiation oncology treatments and medical software based in the US, to introduce new facilities for Radiotherapy treatments in government hospitals. This development is expected to bring about a big change in cancer treatments in the country.
Varian Medical Systems has approached many Indian states with a high cancer incidence and mortality to establish public-private partnership (PPP) radiation centres in district government hospitals across these states. In this model, a private clinical service provider will set up centres for radiotherapy treatments at a price that will be agreed upon by the particular States, the States will also bear the responsibility to provide spaces in their government hospitals for the establishment of such centres.
Ashok Kakkar, the senior managing director of Varian at India, said that Varian has also approached the central government to produce a policy document for creating PPP model-based radiotherapy centres. He also mentioned the approach will aid in addressing the geographical imbalance in terms of facility access and availability. He claims that just about 100 of India's 718 districts have radiation facilities and as a result of this only about 18 to 20% of patients in India are able to get radiation treatments necessary for their chance of survival and battling cancer. In comparison to a global average of 1.84, India has just 0.45 linear accelerators or radiation systems per million and radiation oncologists, who are needed for this specialised cancer care, are likewise in limited supply.
Therefore, Ashok Kakkar goes on to add, how it is evident the lack of radiotherapy systems and manpower has lead to a drastic inadequacy in infrastructure, which has ended up causing patients to travel long distances for access to these treatments, and since many cannot afford to travel these distances and par these hurdles they eventually get forced due to circumstances to drop out of these treatments.
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