Cancer patients living on a street outside India’s main tertiary cancer hospital have not, on average, worked for a year; they lost Rs 55,000 as income; 92% have a class VII education or less; one in four has taken loans–from relatives and moneylenders–and spent Rs 76,000, before winding up on the pavement, according to an IndiaSpend survey of these patients.
Although India’s incidence of cancer is half the world average–and a third of the western world’s–it suffers high morbidity, mortality and expenses because there aren’t enough oncologists and
