How AI Caught Leukemia In Parbhani

India's rural and semi-urban healthcare infrastructure is fragmented and stretched thin. At times, compounders play the role of doctors.

- Pankaj Mishra

From the window of Udyati Pathology Lab, the noise of Parbhani is relentless. A chaos of honking scooters, impatient rickshaws and street vendors shouting their daily specials rises from the road below. Just steps away, the railway station adds its own chorus—train announcements crackling through loudspeakers, metal wheels screeching against tracks. The air filled with the small-town urgency of life in motion.

Inside, Dr Chaitanya K. sits in front of a microscope and a half-drunk cup of tea. On the wall, a faded sign reads in hand-painted Marathi: "Accurate diagnosis, unwavering trust."

But here, accuracy has always been a battle fought against exhaustion, distractions and overwhelming demand.

A paediatric blood report arrives on Chaitanya's screen. The numbers seem ordinary: white blood cells normal; haemoglobin slightly low; platelets borderline. Typical monsoon fever, he thinks, almost ready to dismiss it. But experience and the scars of past misdiagnoses have taught him caution.

Instead of signing off, he gently places the slide into an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered scanner he recently bought, against nearly everyone's advice.

Amid the clamour rising from the street, the machine begins examining hundreds of cells, undistracted by the relentless noise below.

Then, a red notification flashes on the screen. Blast cells: 86%.

Chaitanya stares briefly. There's no ambiguity.

"That's leukaemia."

Across town, in a dimly lit paediatric ward at the government hospital, Prasad Pawar, a sugarcane farmer from a village nearby, wipes sweat gently from his son's forehead. The 12-year-old boy lies listless, IV fluids dripping slowly into his arm. For days they had moved from clinic to clinic, first an orthopaedist for back pain, then a paediatrician suspecting dengue. No one said the word "cancer." No one thought it necessary to look deeper.

"He had some pain in his back, so we writer later.