By: Debraj Deb
MUMBAI: Around 70 percent of cancer cases in Northeast India, especially Tripura and Mizoram, occur due to lifestyle habits and infections, eminent medical oncologist and Chief of the Head and Neck Surgery Department at Tata Memorial Hospital Dr. Anil K. D’Cruz said.
The cancer expert said that among every hundred cases of cancer patients who come to TMH from Tripura every year, around fifty are caused due to tobacco or alcohol.
Ten others have cancer due to infections like HPV, HIV or Hepatitis while faulty diet and obesity cause around ten other cancer cases in every hundred.
In the Northeast India, Tripura and Mizoram are ill-known as the cancer belt.“Lifestyle, diet and infections have always constituted the lionshare of cancer among patients from Northeast. And all these are easily preventable”, Dr. D’Cruz said. He added that high preference for pickles, smoked meat in the different Northeast Indian states were found to have carcinogenic effects.
According to the national health data, Northeast India has got around 200 cancer occurances for every one lakh people. The national average stands at 100-110. When asked about possible measures to tackle the rising menace of cancer patients in Northeast India, that also heavily lacks proper healthcare facilities for early detection of cancer, the cancer expert said people should focus on losing weight and maintaining proper hygiene to prevent cancer.
Experts from across the country have recently come together to form the National Cancer Grid, a network that covers 9 cancer treatment-offering institutions across the country. The Grid works to offer standardized cancer treatment across the country.
In Northeast India, the Tata Memorial Hospital took up the Dr. B Borooah Cancer Institute for upgradation 2 years back. In the coming years, the Institute is expected to have state-of-art technology for treatment at par with the TMH.
The National Cancer Grid has also started outreach programmes in the Northeast India, in which a team of acclaimed oncologists from across the country visited Sikkim, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland in September last year. A second visit of the NCG is expected from the 20th of this month, which would cover Tripura, Meghalaya, Manipur and Mizoram.
Out of 70,000 patients who were treated at Tata Memorial Hospital from 2010 till 2016, 18 were from Tripura, forty-three from Mizoram, 207 patients came from Manipur, 15 from Nagaland, 850 patients were from Assam, 44 came from Meghalaya while 45 others came from Arunachal Pradesh.
