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Cancer treatment poised for significant advancement – Cancer Specialist
In a matter of 10 years the biggest advancement in cancer treatment is likely to be a sub-type classification of the disease. At least this is the expectation of local cancer specialist, Dr Surendra Persaud, who anticipates that “not only will your cancer specimen be sent to a pathologist but it will be sent to a geneticist who will analyze your cancer and the chemotherapy or medications will be targeted towards your cancer.”
He alluded to the furtherance of genetic research even as he noted that “this is not something that will be done in developing countries for now…”
His vision for the treatment of cancer comes at a time when the scourge of cancer in its various forms continues to wreak unwarranted havoc the world over and even as researchers are still trying to ascertain the true root causes of the potentially deadly disease.
As a rule, about 10 per cent of the women who have breast cancers are hereditary thus 90 per cent are in fact not, Dr. Persaud asserted. “People would say oh! There is nobody in my family with cancer so why did I get it? But it has nothing to do with whether it is in your family or not,” he pointed out.
He added that “there aren’t things that we can pinpoint we do not know if it is our lifestyles, we do not know if it is what we eat or whether it is what we are exposed to…Cause and effects have not been established in many of the cancers.”
Dr. Surendra Persaud
It is for this reason that physicians and other medical experts have been preaching early detection as the only guaranteed way of arresting the impact of cancer. “This is essential in the overwhelming majority of the cancers,” Dr. Persaud stressed even as he alluded to the fact that when cancer, particularly breast cancer, occurs in a younger victim it tends to be more aggressive.
He noted, though, that more members of the public have been seeking to be screened complete with regular screening. Those that have been found to be inflicted with the disease have also been accessing treatment and newer drugs are being introduced that are more efficacious, he added.
It was just recently that Minister of Health Dr. Leslie Ramsammy revealed that in excess of $300M has been plugged into the Ministry of Health’s Cancer Programme with the annual cost of medicines amounting to approximately $150M.
In fact he disclosed that the per capita expenditure, that is the how many patients benefit and the cost of cancer medicine is about 10 times the per capita cost of other medicines. “It is indeed far more expensive than treating an HIV patient and remember that is what everybody is focused on these days but cancer is the expensive one…the treatment of a cancer patient is extremely expensive,” he added.
In addition to medicines provided by the Ministry, Minister Ramsammy revealed that patients themselves are also expending significant sums as well on treatment. “We are not able to meet all of their needs so you could see when you look at the number of patients that are on treatment, about 1,000 patients, and you look at the amount of money that we are spending.
“We spend almost 50 per cent more than we spend on diabetes medicines where we are dealing with 40,000 people…That’s how expensive it is.”
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