Kashmir Needs Cancer Funds

Treatment costs are pushing families into debt, land sales, and lost schooling. Local funds can protect lives and futures.

- Irshad Mushtaq

Many Kashmiri families keep three generations under one roof.

A grandfather receives a cancer diagnosis. His son steps away from work to take him for treatment while grandchildren watch the changes at home.

A young parent receives the same diagnosis. Elderly parents wonder who will care for the children.

One case touches the whole family on emotional levels, financial levels, and practical levels right away.

Working-class families deepen the narrative with their own struggles and hopes.

Drivers, shopkeepers, and labourers lose a full day's pay for every hospital visit. Travel from Kupwara, Baramulla, Anantnag, or Poonch to Srinagar or Jammu starts early, fills the entire day, and ends late with everyone tired.

Cancer treatment brings hospital bills plus all the income lost when someone must attend the patient.

Consider a taxi driver whose wife battles breast cancer. He often spends ten to fifteen days each month on hospital trips and tests. Relatives help a little. His earnings drop sharply while expenses climb.

Cancer arrives as a shock that silently rearranges a child's education. Parents shift them to cheaper schools, or stop tuition altogether. Older children, especially girls, begin caring for younger siblings or the patient, trading classrooms for kitchens and hospital corridors.

Homework fades, attendance breaks, and exam forms remain unfilled as money is diverted to medicine.

The strain is immediate, measured in unpaid fees and missed lessons, but its shadow stretches forward.

A child pulled away from school today often grows into an adult with narrower choices and lower earnings tomorrow.