When cancer on an average killed 47 in Odisha every 24 hours in 2015, the lethality is more among women than men affected by the disease.
Odisha is the only State in the entire eastern region where women cancer patients outnumbered men in 2015. The worry is women cancer cases in State are ticking an upward trend by clocking an around 8 per cent rise since 2012.
According to cancer incidence data available with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), women cancer patients in Odisha totalled to over 53 per cent of total cancer cases against 47 per cent men in 2015. The average of women cancer patients in the eastern region is around 51 per cent. In the immediate neighbourhood, only Chhattisgarh has equally higher women proportion to men in total cancer cases like Odisha. The relevance here is cancer being a debilitating disease, it has grave social repercussions too when women are most affected across the urban-rural divide here, given their fragile economic independence in social strata with large tribal population.
However, such a high burden among women in the State could have been avoidable as nearly one-third of total women cancer cases are either breast or cervix, where a massive safety or health/hygiene awareness could have proved the best preventive therapy against cancer among women in the State. Of the over 21,000 women cancer cases, a high of around 6,850 cases are either cervical or breast cancer cases in Odisha last year, reveals the ICMR data. According to ICMR, an indigenous version called Magnivisuliser launched by it for undertaking screening of cervical cancer could easily be used by trained health workers for early detection of cervical cancer cases in rural areas. A profiling of the cervical and oral cancer incidences in Odisha reveals that the worst affected belong to lower income group and mostly inhabit in rural areas. Incidences of cervix and oral cancer are higher in rural than urban areas in the State.
It is observed that of the over 18,000 cancer affected men in State last year, oral cancer took a major chunk owing to higher tobacco consumption among men. However, stomach cancer and liver cirrhosis cases have grown faster in recent years among the men in State owing to growing indulgent lifestyle changes with more and more junk food and alcohol consumption.
Significantly, in this backdrop the fact of below par utilisation of assistance released by the Centre for control of cancer under the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular diseases and Stroke (NPCDCS) sounds appalling. According to available data, while only 33 per cent of fund released stood utilised in 2014-15, the utilisation dipped to a mere 3 per cent till December 2015 in the fiscal 2015-16.
Though, the State Health Department has launched certain initiatives for cancer patients, massive detection drive is yet to see the light of the day.