Page 11 - ACCF - Stories of Resilience

life. Every rupee they earned was a fight against hunger, a desperate attempt to keep their own children fed. When we urged
them to take their father to the cancer hospital, their voices trembled—not with anger, but with helplessness.

“If we stop working, our families won’t eat,” they said, their eyes filled with guilt and pain.
“We cannot afford to take him to the hospital.”

It wasn’t that they didn’t love their father. It wasn’t that they didn’t care. But poverty had chained them, forcing them to make
an impossible choice—continue working to feed their families or leave everything behind to care for their dying father.
THE UNSEEN BATTLE OF THE POOR

For those who have money, cancer is a disease to be fought with the best treatments, with doctors and hospitals offering hope.
But for the poor, cancer is not just an illness—it is a death sentence that comes with the added burden of helplessness.

What could he do? Beg his sons to abandon their families? Watch them sink into the same despair he had lived through? Or
accept his fate, knowing that there was no way out?

As healthcare workers, we see suffering every day. We see patients crying in pain, we see families breaking down. But this was
different. This was the kind of pain that had no immediate cure. The kind of pain that came from knowing that even love was
powerless against poverty.

A SYSTEM THAT FAILS THE NEEDY

His story is not unique. Across the country, countless people suffer in silence, their illnesses left untreated, not because
medical help doesn’t exist, but because they cannot afford it.

Government hospitals provide free treatment, but reaching them requires money—for travel, for food, for daily survival. And
even then, there are waiting lists, delays, and a system that often fails those who need it the most.

For this man, there was no easy answer. Even if he made it to the hospital, who would stay with him? Who would provide for

ASSAM CANCER CARE FOUNDATION 11