Senior journalist Ravi Prakash was given the Patient Advocacy Educational Award at the World Lung Cancer Conference (WCLC-2024) starting from September 7 in the coastal city of San Diego, America. He is the only person from India to receive this award this year.
The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), the world's prestigious organization working on lung cancer, gives this award every year to those selected people of the world who have become the voice of the patients in their respective countries.
This year, apart from Ravi from India, this award has been given to 9 more people of the world. These include 2-2 patient advocates from Australia and Mexico, and 1-1 from America, Italy, UK (England), Nigeria and Thailand. Among these ten people, Ravi is the only person who does patient advocacy despite being a patient himself. The rest of the winners are either caregivers or representatives of organizations working for lung cancer.
This award was given in front of representatives from about 100 countries in a grand ceremony held at the San Diego Convention Center on Saturday evening, September 7.
While receiving this award, Prakash wore a special jacket of Jharkhand and he also wore a ‘Sarna Gamchha’. With his attire in front of representatives from 100 countries at the World Lung Cancer Conference, Ravi very subtly advocated the Sarna Dharma Code at the global level. This proposal is currently under consideration with the Government of India.
Ravi told the media, “It is not about promoting any other religion. We are the people of India and the word secular is written in the preamble of the Constitution itself. But, you cannot snatch the identity of the tribals from their religion for 75 years. Till when they will write the word ‘other’ in the religion column. That is why I decided to receive the award wearing this bandi. I am grateful to Johargram for this.”
Ravi Prakash has been a patient of the last stage of lung cancer for the last 4 years. Last June, his disease progressed to the brain as well. After this, his old medication was stopped. After this, his disease progressed again and he is seriously ill. He is undergoing CAR-T cell therapy in Mumbai for the last one and a half months. So far, he has been given three infusions of gamma-delta cells. He is to be given the fourth infusion as soon as he returns from America.
Ravi himself, while being a cancer patient, wrote many articles about the difficulty of cancer treatment, its cost, the shortcomings of government facilities and schemes. He has been raising this issue in various conferences in the country and abroad. Last year also, he had strongly presented his point in Kathmandu at the World Conference of SAARC Federation of Oncologists.
Ravi Prakash is also the co-founder and director of Lung Connect India Foundation, India's prestigious organization working for lung cancer patients. Ravi and Sanjeev Sharma work as directors in Lung Connect, established on the initiative of Professor Dr. Kumar Prabhash of Tata Memorial Hospital Mumbai. This support group has helped more than 15 thousand lung cancer patients so far.
