New Delhi, Sept 14: Despite having a high incidence of various kinds of cancer in the country, there have been little efforts to create a databank on treatment methods and their efficacy, which could help doctors decide on treatments for their patients, experts said. "India is home to a very large number of people who suffer from cancer, yet there are no studies which could help us widen our knowledge on the treatment methods and their success in treating patients," radiation oncologist at the International Atomic Energy Agency, Austria, Dr Bhadrasain Vikram said at a 'National Cancer Congress - 2003' here.

Holding both the doctors and the patients responsible for failure in building the database, he said, "doctors in most of the government hospitals either do not have resources to maintain a databank or they are not willing to do so."

Dr P K Julka from the department of oncology at AIIMS, however, said "because of the disease burden in India doctors spend most of their time in treating patients, they do not get time to maintain a database".

He suggested having a different set of employees who could collect the data and give the feed back to the concerned doctor.
Julka also attributed India's poor contribution to such data banks as the patients most of the times do not go back to the doctor once the treatment is over.

Bureau Report