Addressing oral cancer treatment in COVID 19 pandemic: The Indian scenario

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic that initiated in Wuhan, China in December 2019, is a well known health emergency of today. The pandemic has affected millions of people across 204 countries.1 This highly infectious virus is not only taking toll on our day to day life and finances but also is severely affecting the much needed patient treatment and care for other gravid diseases including cancer. Especially, in developing countries like India which reports huge number of oral cancer cases & wherein the available resources for treatment are also limited, the condition becomes all the more worrisome.2,3 Moreover, neglection on the treatment of patients with cancer can cause remarkable mortality & morbidity as also;3 timely treatment delivery to especially to stage 1 cancer patients is moral and ethical as the cure rates are high in these cases.4 On the other hand, hospital admission of cancer patients is a concern as these cases are immunodeficient & are highly prone for COVID19 infections.5 In addition in Indian scenario wherein thousands of cancer patients are awaited for their treatment the hospital settings are also limited. We, being the healthcare operators have to come up with a protocol for oral cancer patient management. This should be done by taking into consideration the treatment needs of individual oral cancer patient & the state of the epidemic in the particular region that too in the resource