Dr. Ashraf Zainabi
For a long time, cancer in Kashmir was spoken about in hushed tones, as a rare misfortune that struck a few unlucky families. That illusion no longer holds. In the last five to seven years, cancer has quietly entered everyday conversation. Almost every neighbourhood now has a patient undergoing chemotherapy, a family travelling repeatedly to Srinagar, or someone forced to seek treatment outside the Valley. This is no longer anecdotal. It is a pattern, and one our healthcare system has failed to confront honestly.
Despite the visible rise in cancer cases, Kashmir still does not have a standalone cancer hospital. Oncology services remain tucked inside already overburdened general hospitals, competing for space, machines, and attention. This arrangement might have worked when cancer numbers were low. Today, it is breaking down, at the cost of lives, savings, and dignity.
Cancer is not like a broken bone or an infection that resolves in days. It is long, exhausting, and unforgiving of delay. Diagnosis alone can take weeks even months. Treatment stretches over several years. Patients require repeated scans, biopsies, chemotherapy cycles, radiotherapy sessions, counselling, and follow-ups. When all this is funnelled through overcrowded hospitals designed for acute care, delay becomes routine and suffering becomes normalised.
In Srinagar’s tertiary hospitals, oncology departments are visibly stretched. Waiting lists for chemotherapy grow longer. Radiotherapy slots are limited. Patients travel overnight from far-off districts only to be told to return another day. For someone already weakened by disease, these delays are not administrative inconveniences, they are physical and psychological punishment.
The system’s default response has been referral. Patients are advised to seek treatment outside Jammu and Kashmir. For a small minority, this is manageable. For most, it is financially crushing. Treatment costs multiply when travel, accommodation, food, and unpaid leave are added. Families sell land, mortgage jewellery, or abandon treatment midway. Cancer, in Kashmir, often becomes a sentence not just of illness but of economic ruin.
This is where the argument for a standalone cancer hospital becomes unavoidable. Cancer care cannot remain an attached department, surviving on borrowed space and shared resources. It needs a facility built specifically for its demands, diagnostics, radiotherapy, medical and surgical oncology, pain management, mental health support, and palliative care under one roof. Fragmented care costs time, and time is what cancer patients do not have.
Opponents will raise the question of cost. But cost compared to what? Compared to endless referrals? Compared to families draining lifetime savings? Compared to late-stage treatment that is far more expensive than early intervention? The truth is that Kashmir is already paying for the absence of a cancer hospital, it is just paying privately, painfully, and inefficiently.
“The Kashmiri healthcare system is currently failing to address a full-blown cancer crisis due to systemic delays and insufficient “half-measures.” While a dedicated cancer hospital cannot eradicate the disease, its establishment is essential to restore public trust and provide the structural support that patients currently lack.”
A centrally located cancer hospital, accessible from all districts and placed outside Srinagar’s worst congestion zones, preferably between Pantha-chowk and Parimpora, could change the equation. Cancer patients do not need emergency access once; they need reliable access dozens of times. Planning must reflect the reality of repeated visits, weakened patients, and caregivers who cannot afford chaos.
Beyond treatment, such a hospital would bring something Kashmir badly lacks, clarity. At present, there is no comprehensive, publicly accessible cancer registry mapping where cases are rising, which age groups are affected, or which cancers dominate. Without data, policy remains guesswork. A dedicated cancer institution could anchor screening programmes, early detection drives, and research into local risk factors, environmental, dietary, occupational, or otherwise.
Many experts already suspect links between cancer and food adulteration, pesticide use, pollution, stress, and lifestyle changes. Whether each suspicion is scientifically proven or not, the surge itself is undeniable. Healthcare planning cannot wait for perfect studies while patients line hospital corridors. Policy must respond to what is unfolding in real time.
There is also a quieter aspect often ignored, dignity. Cancer patients need time with doctors, counselling, and continuity of care. Overcrowded general hospitals are simply not designed for this. Doctors rush between departments. Patients wait in corridors. Conversations happen in haste. A dedicated cancer hospital would allow care to slow down where it must, and focus where it matters.
Kashmir has invested in medical colleges, trauma centres, and super-speciality hospitals. A cancer hospital is not an extravagance added to that list; it is the missing piece. If children deserve specialised hospitals because their needs are unique, cancer patients deserve the same recognition.
This is also a matter of equity. Those with means leave the Valley. Those without stay back and struggle. Public healthcare exists to narrow this gap, not widen it. A standalone cancer hospital would be one of the strongest signals that the state recognises cancer not as an exception, but as a central public health challenge.
Healthcare systems fail not only through neglect, but through delay. Kashmir’s cancer burden is no longer emerging, it has arrived. Continuing with half-measures will only deepen the crisis. A cancer hospital will not eliminate the disease. But it will restore something equally important, the sense that when people fall seriously ill, the system is ready to stand with them.Right now, it is not.
(The author is a teacher and a researcher based in Gowhar Pora Chadoora of Central Kashmir’s Budgam district. The views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”)
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