The chaotic scenes at Mumbai’s Tata Memorial Hospital are a window into a medical crisis threatening to cripple a health system already overburdened by some of the world’s sickest people. More than 1,000 new patients file through Asia’s largest cancer treatment center a week. A growing number are there for breast cancer, a disease that’s gaining in alarming ways. A decade ago, it moved ahead of oral cancer, in which India ranks No. 1 worldwide, to become the country’s fastest-growing malignancy. Breast cancer is a tough and vicious foe in India. Many women, held back by modesty, poverty or ignorance, delay doctor visits when they find something wrong with their breasts. When they finally get a checkup, their prognosis is often dire. It also strikes women at least a decade earlier than in the West and causes tumors that are more likely to spread faster and less likely to respond to hormonal therapies. Researchers posit that the same biological mechanism that makes Indians more susceptible to diabetes when they gain excess weight may also be stoking breast cancer.
