Cancer Can Be Cured (English) By Dr Chirag A Shah 1. Need for such a book Cancer incidence is rising rapidly. Prevention and early detec-tion are feasible in many cases. High quality and affordable cancer treatments are available in India. HOWEVER, unfortunately patients and doctors both have very little or wrong information about both prevention/detection and treatment. Even today, many doctors ask this question “can cancer be cured? Would patient tolerate
treatment?”. If doctors have such high levels of ignorance, what about patients? Most oncology advances are from last about 30-40 years, and a lot more in last 15 years. It is thus understandable to some extent that most doctors are not up to date. Coupled with this, cancer incidence started rising only recently in India, and growth of multidisciplinary cancer centers and teams is still a phenomenon of last decade, except very few old regional cancer centers. Book tries to answer these questions in a scientific manner, with a tilt towards opti-mism, hope. However no tall claims are made about 100% results in every case, as this is a science driven effort.
This book is for:
A. Patients and families looking for answers and hope.
B. Doctors, essentially all non oncologists, for whom cancer was hardly part of curriculum during their MBBS or Homeopathy or Ayurvedic basic de-gree. But now they interact with many cancer patients at some or other point in their practice.
C. Paramedical staff, hospital staff etc dealing with cancer patients at some or other point directly or indirectly.
D. Medical students, for whom textbooks can be very daunting. Short lucid description will help them conceptualize better.
E. General public, who wants to know about cancer, as the incidence is rising, and they want to do some thing about it.
2. Why this book Book is written in a lucid language, with a unique interactive manner, and with examples of
successful cases. This is different from most books which are more of textbook type, and hence not interesting to read or comprehend for non specialists. Book also has over 135 pictures and tables, to make it interesting and easy to read. And pages are color coded. Also, because it has been reviewed and found worthy of praise by 3 stellar oncolo-gists, Dr Joseph Sparano, Professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine; Dr Purvish Parikh, eminent oncologist of India and Ex. Head of Medical Oncology at Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai; and Dr Ravi Patel, Associate Professor at University of California Los Angeles. It has also received praise and support from Smt. Anandiben Patel, Chief Minister of Gujarat and a best teacher herself; Shri Nitinbhai Patel, health minister; Ms Preetha Reddy, vice chair person of Apollo Hospital group, and Dr Rajiv Modi, chairman of Cadila pharmaceuticals.
3. Messages that we want to spread through this book
A. Cancer can be cured. Awareness is the first step towards this goal. Early diagnosis, Timely treatment, and Proper treatment are the cornerstones for high cure rates.
B. Cancer can be prevented in most cases. Key to this goal are avoidance of tobacco and alcohol, old fashioned good habits, and new tools like vaccine.
C. High end treatment facilities and experts are now much more widely available. Bigger issue is lack of awareness, not lack of facilities.
D. India has the cheapest and yet one of the best healthcare in the world. “Can cancer be cured” is not the question, how many is the question. In USA alone, there are over 1.4 crore cancer survivors, with population one fourth of India. Many celebrity cancer survivors are well known to us, like cricketer Yuvraj Singh, cyclist Lance Armstrong, Hollywood star Michael Douglas, Music star Kylie Minogue, Actress Lisa Ray, Microsoft co founder Paul Allen...and others. One of the most unique and positive message, useful for many newly diagnosed cancer patients, is the fact that a number of cancers can now be treated without surgery, using only radiation and chemotherapy combination. This includes several cancers of mouth and throat region, lower end of uterus/cervix, food pipe/esophagus, lung, prostate, urinary bladder etc. |
