Friday, December 30 2005 14:54 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Patna: Laying stress on early detection of cancer cases, President A P J Abdul Kalam today (Dec 30,2005) said doctors should visit far flung areas of the country to screen such cases and begin early treatment.

Nutritional support should become part of the therapy especially in rural areas. This will decrease complications, improve immunological status and survival, Kalam, who was addressing a function after inaugurating the 50-bed paediatric oncology ward of Mahavir Cancer Institute at Fulwarisharif here.

It was also important that nutrition support is tailored to meet the needs of the individual child, he said emphasising affordable treatment of the disease, which involved unique combinations of radiation, chemotherapy and surgery.

Chemotherapy was often hazardous as it led to destroying of healthy cells and in the metabolic path of the targeted cancerous ones.

"Genetic diagnosis could help take good decisions while charting the course of therapy and on the drug side, insteadof looking for agents that kill dividing cells, researchers are now looking for agents that encourage cells to get destroyed," he said.

Industry-hospital-research institution cosortia needed to be established to develop and produce the affordable indigenous products for treatment of cancer, he said adding a firm in Pune had developed algorithms describing interaction between normal cells, malignant cells and nutrients.