Cancer strikes 1,000 kids each year

On World Cancer Day on Saturday, a look into the number of cancer-affected children showed that 1,000 children get added to the list every year.

If Dr Bhavesh Parekh, assistant professor at the Gujarat Cancer Research Institute (GCRI) is to be believed, this is the number that adds on to the list of patients they treat every year. "While it is not necessary that all these 1000 children are hospitalised, this is the increasing number. Of these, 50 patients are currently hospitalised and others are receiving treatment periodically or regularly based on the type of their cancer," said Parekh.
According to him, blood cancer or leukaemia continues to top the list of cancers that affect this group, followed by retino-blastoma (eye cancer) and osteo-sarcoma (bone tumour) that affect children in the age group of
1-14 years.

Parekh explained, "The overall chunk of patients affected by leukaemia which is mostly a genetic disorder is nearly 40% with 80% chances of survival. This is followed by 10% patients for eye cancer with 40% survival rate and 9% patients who get affected by bone tumour with 60% survival."

Similar views were shared by Dr Ashish Kaushal, medical oncologist with HCG Cancer Centre. He further highlighted the types of cancer and the problems faced with diagnosis. "While diagnosis is easy it is difficult to detect symptoms. For instance, patients are brought to specialists or oncologists only when the first line of treatments has failed. By then, nearly two or three weeks have passed," he said.

While 10%-20% are genetic disorders leading to cancer, the cause remains unknown in the remaining nearly 80%.

Elaborating on the problems faced in age group of 1-14 years, Kaushal said, "There are two kinds of haematological malignancies namely leukaemia and lymphoma, followed by solid tumours. However, in solid tumours, children aged 1-5 years mostly get affected by neuroblastoma, retino blastoma and wilm's tumour. Soft tissue sarcoma and bone sarcoma, considering a cumulative figure of the entire age bracket, definitely outnumbers all."

According to Kaushal, in his practice, he treats least 10% paediatric patients followed by adults.