Five-year-old kidney cancer survivor Rajib Malakar and his family came to Chennai for treatment back in 2022. From Dharmanagar, a small town in Tripura, Rajib’s father works in a private firm, while his mother is a homemaker. When they first came to Chennai for treatment, Rajib’s parents stayed in a hotel because they didn’t know anyone in the city.  But the expenses were so high that they had no choice but to go back. A month or two later, however, they were referred to St. Jude India Childcare Centre, a non-profit organisation which offers cost-free and ‘holistic care’ for children unde ..read more

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in India among women today, and consequently, the number of mastectomy surgeries too has gone up. In India, every four minutes a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer. Many women who undergo this painful procedure, where the entire breast tissue is removed, often question their sense of self. While some women have access to silicone breast prostheses, most don’t, and are forced to stuff handkerchiefs and cotton balls in their bras to create an illusion of full breasts. This practice often leads to rashes, infections or painful skin abrasions. It was with ..read more

Prasang Chandorkar was excited about turning a new leaf in his life after meeting Wachika on a matrimonial website. They soon got engaged and started planning their life ahead. But little did they know what was in store for them. Soon after the engagement, in November 2021, Prasang was diagnosed with cancer. This brought his life to a standstill. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Better India (@thebetterindia) He says, “When my father informed Wachika about my condition, she could have left me, but she didn’t. It is not easy to support a cancer patient. But she chose to be m ..read more

In 2016, Geetha Manjunath had a terrific career heading the Data Analytics Research Laboratory in Xerox Research Centre India (XRCI). And then, one phone call changed her life.  Her cousin, all of 42, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. As the diagnosis was done very late, she didn’t survive. “I was devastated,” she recalls.  Working in Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Bengaluru resident decided to quit her job and find a tech-based solution to detect breast cancer early.  “The mammogram had missed her cancer earlier,” she tells The Better India.  “So I wanted to develo ..read more

This article has been sponsored by Astra Zeneca. When Asha Devi got the news of her pregnancy, she was overwhelmed with joy. The moment of celebration, however, soon began to fade, when after four months the doctors found a tumour in her uterus. “My world came crashing down hearing that news. I was so scared that I would lose my baby and my life. But, the doctors confirmed that it wasn’t cancerous and that its timely discovery increased our chances of survival,” says Asha, a resident of Tikri village, in Varanasi, UP. While her medication continued during the pregnancy, almost seven months aft ..read more

Scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT-KGP) have developed what they are calling a “highly accurate, portable, yet user-friendly, affordable and non-invasive device for detecting oral cancer in resource-constrained clinical settings.” (Image above of Professor Suman Chakraborty and his student Arka Bhowmik on the left and their affordable, non-invasive device on the right) Giving credibility to their innovation, experts from the Guru Nanak Institute of Dental Sciences and Research in Kolkata in their “high standard biopsy reports” have established the efficacy of this ..read more

Noticing the unknown plant that grew abundantly in the backyard of my ancestral house, I used to wonder what it was used for. It grew everywhere like a weed but was mostly used by me in my pretend cooking games as a kid. Back then, we were all forced by our grandparents to eat such home-grown herbs. However, little did I know that its uses were far more important. The herb grows like bougainvillea in Kerala but still goes unnoticed. On the other hand, the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu cultivates it on a large scale and consumes it as a staple. The delicious Manathakkali Vatha Kuzhambu is qu ..read more

In early 2021, Meher Roy was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukaemia (ALL) in the nick of time by a routine standard blood test- the Complete Blood Count (CBC). ALL is a type of blood and bone marrow cancer known for its rapid progression. “Ideally, a CBC is a routine automated test. However, if an unusual discrepancy is found in the readings, the blood work is analysed by a human pathologist under the microscope. In my case, that’s what happened,” he tells The Better India. Ordinarily, one would expect such a cancer diagnosis to come thanks to severe symptoms or life-altering experiences ..read more

At 23, Jayant Kandoi weighs no more than 36 kgs, but when he speaks, you can hear the determination of a heavyweight fighter. His opponent is a formidable one, over whom he has prevailed time and again – Jayant is a six-time cancer survivor. “I’ve spent a good portion of my childhood surviving cancer. I counted 1,237 days that I have spent in hospitals over the last nine years, which translates to nearly 4 years in hospitals,” Jayant tells The Better India. Even though he asserts that he has never let it get to him, going through so many surgeries has done immense damage to his body, which has ..read more

When Lady Meherbai Tata died of leukaemia on 18 June 1931, her husband, Sir Dorabji Tata, Jamsetji Tata’s son and a key figure of the Tata Group endowed the Lady Tata Memorial Trust with a corpus for research into leukaemia in memory of his wife. He set out to establish high-quality facilities for cancer treatment in India. (Images above of Dr. Indraneel Mittra and a representational photo of middle-aged women.)  Out of this humanitarian commitment emerged the now well-renowned Tata Memorial Hospital, commissioned by the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust on 28 February 1941. Today, the Tata Memorial ..read more