New Delhi: September is celebrated as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, an annual opportunity to create awareness of the impact of cancer on so many children and their families around the world. It is also known as Gold September, the gold colour to honour children with cancer’s courage. Expressing solidarity and giving strength to these brave hearts and their families is the least we can do as a society at large.
In an interaction with News9Live, Dr Priti Mehta, Sr Consultant Paediatric Haematology Oncology and BMT, Narayana Health SRCC Children’s Hospital, spoke about the symptoms of childhood cancer and its incidence in India.
“India shares 1/6th the burden of newly diagnosed children with cancer. Around 50,000 children are diagnosed with Cancer in India of the total burden of 3,00,000 children diagnosed globally. Of these so many children are hailing from rural areas where access to health care is not optimum. For treatment, these children along with their families have to travel to bigger cities. This adds to the cost of an already expensive modality of treatment as families have to bear the extra cost of stay and food. This leads to abandonment of treatment and loss of young lives,” said Dr Mehta.
Children may not be able to express themselves as easily as adults. However, parents need to seek medical help if they observe unexplained weight loss in the child. If the child is complaining of headaches especially associated with early morning vomiting or develops a sudden onset squint then there could be an underlying brain tumour or tumour of the eye like retinoblastoma. Leg pains in the night could be growing pains but if the child gets up repeatedly due to intolerable pain then he needs a workup for an underlying malignancy.
Similarly, children never complain of back or joint pains unlike adults and so these symptoms should not be taken lightly. Excessive paleness in the child, feeling a lump anywhere in the body, bruises or bleeding from anywhere or persistent unexplained fevers are the other warning signs which should not be taken lightly. The symptoms of childhood cancer are:
