South TN patients forced to go to KL & Chennai for bone marrow transplant

The lack of advanced treatment facility for cancer, like bone marrow transplant (BMT) unit, in the Tirunelveli Medical College Hospital (TvMCH), forces patients from the southern districts to visit the Regional Cancer Centre (RCC) at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala or travel to far-off Chennai for treatment.

- Thinakaran Rajamani @ Tirunelveli

At least 20 blood cancer patients and their caretakers whom TNIE interacted in the RCC are from Kanniyakumari, Tirunelveli, Tenkasi and Thoothukudi districts. They said they were referred to RCC by medical college hospitals in their respective districts due to absence of BMT unit. "We were advised by a government oncologist to visit private institutions in Vellore or Chennai (Adyar) if we are unwilling to go to RCC, which is run by the Kerala government. Unable to travel nearly 700 km to Chennai with my ailing 23-year-old brother, I admitted him to RCC. However, as we do not have PM-JAY insurance cashless cover, I had to spend several lakhs o