Pain Relief And You

Cancer

We presently have around 70 patients who are facing the scourge of cancer. We have a good working relationship with doctors from Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology and Bangalore Institute of Oncology. Most of our patients suffer from Leukemia (Blood cancer). We also have patients suffering from Cancers of the breast, ovaries and uterus. Leukemia has 85-90% chances of recovery if detected early and treated appropriately. There are two major streams of treatment for this disease.

Chemotherapy uses chemicals to help destroy the cancerous cells. The cost of treatment is very high and a typical treatment includes six cycles of injection. Each cycle, usually once in 21 days, costs Rs 12,000/- to 25,000/-. Thus the total treatment costs per patient (six cycles) is around Rs 72,000/- to Rs 1,50,000/-, which is unaffordable to most deprived people. Of this requirement, PRAY is currently only able to give around Rs 3,000/- to Rs 5000/- on an average to each patient. We are thus falling critically short of meeting the requirements of our current patients and are unable to scale up this activity to meet the huge requirement we are facing.

Radiotherapy is the other stream of treatment which uses radiation to eliminate the cancer cells. The costs of treatment and the tenure is also similar to chemotherapy. Even in this, we are unable to match the requirements and are only able to fund the patients only partially for each treatment cycle.

Till date, we have aided 222 patients suffering from cancer with a total amount of Rs. 8.7 lakhs. In 2005-06 alone, we spent Rs. 2.5 lakhs in aiding 84 patients. However, out of the total conservative requirement of around Rs 1.6 cr for our patients till date, we have been only able to spend Rs 8.7 lakhs, which is less than 5.5% of the total requirement to help our patients suffering from Cancer. For the remaining amounts, the patients are forced to depend on other organizations or raise money on their own. We would like to be able to finance the patients as much as possible and also accept more patients, but are unable to do so due to lack of funds. If you specifically would like to sponsor patients for treatment of cancer, then please click here.