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As Ananth Kumar passes away, a look at politicians who have beaten or succumbed to cancer

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Union minister Ananth Kumar died Monday of cancer, a disease that also afflicts his former ministerial colleague Manohar Parrikar.

New Delhi: Union minister Ananth Kumar, who passed away Monday, had been under treatment for cancer, a disease that is estimated to affect seven lakh new patients in India every year.

His party colleague and Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar is also under treatment for cancer.

However, while hope is a struggle for most in the face of a cancer diagnosis, recent medical advances are helping millions beat the disease.

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief and former union minister Sharad Pawar, 77, was diagnosed with oral cancer over a decade and a half ago, with the doctor telling him that he didn’t have long to live.

“After my first surgery, a doctor said, ‘you have life for six months’,” he told ThePrint Editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta on Walk The Talk, “But I fought it.”


Also read: One of the fastest spreading cancers that ails 2 of India’s top politicians


Pawar underwent two more surgeries to beat the disease, visiting the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York, US, for treatment frequently.

Ever since, he has been an avid campaigner for awareness about tobacco consumption and is known as the face of Maharashtra’s gutka (chewable tobacco) ban.

Gutka is considered a major oral cancer hazard.

“I have myself been a victim of tobacco,” Pawar said. “On my tours, people insisted that I have tobacco. Ultimately, I started liking it and became a patient of oral cancer.”

“Most of my cheek bone had to be removed.  I underwent a major surgery that affected my conversation capacity,” he said. “Communication muscles have been affected.”

Former union minister Yashwant Sinha, who was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2006, has never spoken about his fight with the disease.

When approached by ThePrint, he said, “This is the first time someone from the media has asked me directly about it. I believe one should neither advertise suffering from the disease nor hide it.”

Sinha, who underwent six chemotherapy sessions at hospitals in Delhi and Mumbai, said the diagnosis had “devastated” him.

“I felt a growth at the front of my neck, but there was no sign or pain,” he said, “One day, while speaking to a doctor in the Parliament House annexe about a stomach problem, I told him about this growth.

“A biopsy followed,” he added.

“Luckily, it was at an early stage,” Sinha, 80, said. “I underwent my first chemo session at Raheja hospital in Mumbai, and the remaining five at AIIMS.”

“People close to me and my colleagues in Parliament knew about it,” he said, “They asked me since I made fewer visits to Parliament during the budget of that season.”

The former IAS officer said he had been told to seek treatment abroad but trusted Indian specialists. He was declared free of cancer in 2007.

Other survivors include Uttar Pradesh governor Ram Naik, 84, who was diagnosed with cancer in 1993-94, when he was an MLA in Maharashtra. Treated at the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, he is said to have offered encouragement to other cancer patients.

Former Congress MLA from Uttar Pradesh Akhilesh Singh is battling blood cancer. He retired from active politics following his diagnosis in 2017.


Also read: Here’s why Arun Jaitley didn’t shake hands with PM Narendra Modi


Those who lost the battle

Former Prime Minister V.P. Singh, who dethroned the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1989, battled blood cancer and chronic renal failure for years before his death in 2008. He was 77.

In 2007, former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar, a fixture on India’s political landscape for four decades, had died after battling multiple myeloma (bone cancer). He was 80.

In 2010, the disease killed former vice-president and three-time Rajasthan chief minister Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, who suffered from one of the head and neck cancers.

Shekhawat, who had sought treatment overseas and at AIIMS, had a cardiac arrest at the age of 86.

“Shekhawat was battling cancer for a long time, but kept working. He was a great human being,” said Dr Pramod Kumar Julka, a senior oncologist who has earlier served at AIIMS Delhi.

“He was first operated on, then put on radiation, later chemotherapy. Multimodality treatment was given to him. But we did not have new drugs at the time,” he added.

Samajwadi Party ideologue Mohan Singh, a patient of leukaemia (blood cancer), passed away in 2013.

In 2012, former Maharashtra minister Vimal Mundada (54) passed away at Mumbai’s Lilavati hospital after a prolonged battle with cancer.

Former Haryana chief minister Bhajan Lal died of rectum cancer. He was treated at AIIMS.

The shift to foreign shores

Parrikar, who is now back in Goa, initially travelled to the US in the immediate aftermath of his diagnosis before seeking treatment at AIIMS Delhi. He is said to be suffering from pancreatic cancer.

Ananth Kumar, too, is said to have sought cancer treatment in the UK.

Among other public figures, Bollywood star Sonali Bendre, who recently disclosed her cancer diagnosis, is undergoing chemotherapy in the US.

Julka, now the senior director at the oncology daycare centre at Max healthcare, said it was only after the 1970s that politicians and the rich started going abroad for cancer treatment.

“The shift first took them from AIIMS to Mumbai, and then slowly abroad to good centres like MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Texas and Sloan Kettering in New York,” he said. “They offer super-specialisation in cancer treatment.”

According to Julka, former President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy was among the first to seek treatment abroad. He suffered from lung cancer, and is said to have gone abroad between 1979 and 80.

Dr Sameer Kaul, a senior oncologist at Apollo Hospitals, said he had had the opportunity to treat “more than a dozen” public figures. According to him, people of prominence preferred to go abroad for treatment primarily to guard their privacy.

“They prefer the anonymity offered by foreign shores to shield their public image, business and career prospects from the negative connotations of this disease,” he told ThePrint.

“(The quality of) Treatment in India is almost the same as abroad now,” he claimed.

“The only difference is that the post-surgery infection rate is much lower outside India,” he added. “But with the rise of private healthcare, good cancer centres are coming up in the country and look promising.”

Another important aspect, Julka said, was that the US Food and Drugs Administration was quick to clear many new breakthrough drugs, while approval was slower to get in India.

“What takes public figures abroad for cancer treatment is the availability of better drugs, which come to India late,” Julka said. “Clinical trials for people in advanced stages and trial of a new drug happens less in India.”


Also read: A ‘GPS’ will help AIIMS detect, treat lung cancer


Out of reach

Kaul said many advanced treatments, including the Proton Beam Therapy (a radiation therapy that uses protons rather than X-rays) and immunotherapy (which equips the body’s immunity to fight cancer), had come to India, but remained accessible only for the rich.

“Most, if not all, infrastructure and technologies are available to the rich and famous in India, mostly through the private tertiary healthcare institutions in major Indian cities,” he added.

“The financially underprivileged and uninsured sections find it difficult to access efficient and prompt cancer management systems,” said Kaul. “Expensive advances like targeted bio and immunotherapeutics, IMRT, IGRT (Intensity modulated radiation therapy with image guidance) systems, sterile marrow transplant facilities are beyond their reach.”

Sinha said the government needed to make cancer treatment cheaper.

“A lot has changed in cancer treatment in the last 12 years but it continues to be expensive,” he said. “I know people who had to sell things to get the treatment. Government must make cancer treatment accessible to all.”

On this front, there is hope that the Narendra Modi government’s Ayushman Bharat scheme, which seeks to give each poor family cashless healthcare cover of Rs 5 lakh per year, will make cancer treatment more accessible for the underprivileged.

Julka said he fought to make chemotherapy and radiotherapy free at AIIMS in the 1980s. “Before the 1980s, these treatments would cost a nominal charge. Some hospitals are still battling on that front in India,” he said.

“Now, Ayushman Bharat looks like it will support the poor who suffer from cancer.”

This report, originally published on 22 September, has been updated in light of union minister Ananth Kumar’s death on 12 November.

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