One fine morning in 1986, Gupta could not get out of bed in her Montreal apartment. She felt lifeless. In a matter of a few months, she had lost tonnes of weight, was looking paler and feeling drained out.

But doctors didn’t think this was a cause for concern. “My doctor suspected it was tuberculosis since I came from a Third World country.”

Her blood tests revealed that the white blood count in her body had gone up drastically. “Chest x-rays revealed a patch on my right lung. I was frightened,” she says.

Gupta was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph nodes. She was 32 then, and mother of a three-year-old son. She was doing a PhD from McGill University in Montreal.

Gupta was perhaps fortunate. World over, the cure rate for Hodgkin’s lymphoma is about 93 per cent, which makes it one of the most curable forms of cancer, say doctors.

With 2009 deaths in 2006-07 in Delhi, according to Delhi government figures, cancer is fourth on the list of killer diseases that need immediate attention, especially when it comes to women.

A recent report from the Delhi Cancer Registry (DCR) says lung cancer among men and breast cancer in women claim most lives. The report also cautions about an increase in the cases of breast cancer among women and prostate cancer in men.

The incidence rate of the disease among men is 121.9 every one lakh men while among women, it is 135.3 every one lakh urban women, according to DCR figures.

“Roughly, one out of 30 cancer patients in urban centres suffer from breast cancer,” says Gupta, who runs CanSupport, a non-governmental organisation that works among cancer-affected people in Delhi and provides them a platform to talk their blues away.

But more than the disease — cancer ails approximately 12,000 people in Delhi — it is the lack of awareness about it that worries her. “It’s not a killer disease until you allow it to reach an advanced stage where it can’t be treated,” Gupta says.

Doctors say most patients come to them when the disease is in advanced stages. “Nearly 80 per cent cancer cases are reported in the third or fourth stage, when the success rate of treatment is very low,” says Dr G K Rath, head of the Department of Oncology of Rotary Cancer Hospital at All-India Institute of Medical Sciences.

Lack of proper diagnostic facilities and social stigma attached to the disease also leads to late diagnosis, says Dr Mano Bhadauria, oncologist at Fortis Escorts Hospital. “Stigma associated with vaginal discharges in some forms of cancer keeps people away from discussing it. For diagnosis, biopsy is mandatory and special pathologists are required,” says Dr Bhadauria.

And since all forms of cancer are painless in initial stages, people don’t get to know they are suffering from the disease, Bhadauria adds.

Doll Singh, a 55-year-old survivor of ovarian cancer, says she was able to cope with the disease better just by talking about it. Singh came to CanSupport after six months of radiation therapy and years of living with fear. “I once thought cancer was the end of my life. After I talked about it, I saw life beyond it. Cancer is behind me now,” she says.

Cancer figures

2009
Deaths in Delhi in 2006-07

1,207
Men died of cancer

802
Women died of cancer