With just a patchwork of colorful plastic sheets to shield patients from the heavy monsoon rains, a Mumbai street acts as an unofficial ward to one of India’s top cancer treatment centers.
Every year, the Tata Memorial Hospital draws tens of thousands of cancer sufferers thanks to its heavily subsidized medical care. However, the city’s steep hotel and rental prices force scores to sleep on nearby pavements.
“There’s rats, mosquitoes and dirt,” said farmer Suresh Patidar, who stays with his wife Leela, 55, as she undergoes treatment for breast cancer.
Photo: AFP
“We tried to settle on the other side of the street but the police didn’t allow it,” he said.
“A hotel is very costly. It’s impossible,” he added.
With their home in the central state of Madhya Pradesh at least 12 hours away by train, the Patidars’ cheapest option has been to sleep on the roadside for the past month, despite the regular torrential downpours.
The bandages and surgical masks worn by others on the street betray their common suffering.
The Tata center offers some free or cheap rooms around the city to poor outpatients, and more are being added, but numbers are difficult to manage as Indian cancer cases increase.
“There will always be more people,” hospital spokesman SH Jafri said. “Many NGOs give them food and things on the footpath, so because of that they tend to stay there.”
UNWELCOME NEIGHBORS
The pavements have offered such patients and their families a temporary home for years, but there are signs that local residents are growing impatient over their sick neighbors.
At the nearby police station, Senior Inspector Sunil Tondwalkar said he had written to Mumbai’s municipal authorities asking them to move the sick street-dwellers to more suitable lodgings.
Locals have complained they are blocking the pathways, and that “they’re eating and going to the toilet on the footpath and the streets. It’s not hygienic,” Tondwalkar said.
SOFT TARGET
He also wants the streets cleared because he says hospitals can be a “soft target for terrorists,” while “anti-social elements,” such as thieves or beggars, can infiltrate the patients.
Despite their uncomfortable lodgings, the families for now have little alternative.
Few Indian hospitals offer the range of cancer care and cheap costs of the Tata center, where 60 percent of about 50,000 yearly patients are subsidized and 14 percent are treated for free, according to Jafri.
Those on the street said they were contributing to their medical costs, and had sold their land or livestock to help fund their treatment.
“People living on the streets are people who earn daily, eat daily, so they aren’t people with long-term savings,” said HK Savla, founder of the Jeevan Jyot Cancer Relief and Care Trust.
His charity feeds 600 patients and their families in Mumbai twice a day, and he said 150 to 200 people were usually camped outside the Tata hospital.
“They have to save whatever they have to manage their treatment,” he said.
A hotel is an extra cost that could be more effectively spent.
Now a government-run center, the Tata hospital began life in 1941 as a philanthropic venture by the industrialist Tata family after a relative died of cancer, despite going to Britain for expensive treatment.
“They said, what about the poor patients in India? So they started this,” Jafri said.
RISING BLIGHT
The need for such services is only set to grow in the huge nation, where more than half a million people died of cancer in 2010, according to a study published in The Lancet medical journal last year.
Pankaj Chaturvedi, a professor and a head and neck surgeon at the Tata hospital, said cancer is a rising blight as Indian society becomes more affluent.
While breast and cervical cancers are the most common among women, lung and mouth cancers are the biggest killers for men owing to the widespread use of tobacco — especially chewing tobacco — across the country.
“Increasing tobacco and alcohol use, unsafe food and lack of exercise — these are the four factors that lead to an increase in non-communicable diseases, of which cancer is a top one,” he said.
On top of these factors, improvements in medical science mean people are living longer, and “the longer you live, the higher the chance of cancer.”
However, for some, it still strikes early.
Ponmuth Rajaram Haridas, 22, has been camping outside the Tata center for four months with his parents while he is treated for blood cancer, having sold off all the sheep on their farm and taken out a loan.
On doctors’ orders that he eats home-cooked food, his small and spritely mother makes him simple meals of rice, dahl and vegetables on a tiny stove in a corner of their makeshift tent.
Speaking through a surgical mask to keep out the germs, he said he hopes to return to their village in another couple of months after he finishes two more sessions of chemotherapy.
“I can’t get to sleep here. The atmosphere is much better at home,” he said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of