Chandigarh: Woman’s 30-year battle with blood cancer inspires many
Chronic Myeloid Leukemia is a type of blood cancer that once used to be considered fatal disease, but with a clinical trial conducted in Australia in 2001, came Imatinib drug, also called magic bullet that turned out to be game changer for CML patients
After being told to have maximum survival of around 5 years following chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) diagnosis , a type of blood cancer in 1995, Veena Sood, now having survived cancer for 30 years, at the age of 68 shared her story at the 10th CML patient group meeting held at Zakir Hall of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research on Sunday. With 30 years of surviving cancer, Veena Sood inspired the hall full of CML patients to not lose hope and keep up with their treatment.
Chronic Myeloid Leukemia is a type of blood cancer that once used to be considered fatal disease with an average survival of 2-3 years, but with a clinical trial conducted in Australia in 2001, came Imatinib drug, also called magic bullet that turned out to be game changer for CML patients. The drug came to India in 2003 but Veena Sood didn’t have time to wait this long for a new drug. Having read about the clinical trial being conducted for CML patients in Australia, Veena Sood and her husband Vinod Sood somehow made their way to Australia to be included in the trial.
For three months, Veena Sood received the new drug which turned life saving for her. After coming back to India, the couple had to face hardship in getting the medicine to India as it was not available in country till 2003. Despite facing multiple hiccups in the treatment and crossing miles for the same, 68-year-old Veena and her 75-year-old husband Vinod Sood serve motivation to others to live their life to the fullest. The couple also have a Youtube channel where Vinay Sood, himself a patient of heart attack, regularly upload videos of him singing songs for his wife and cheering her.
CML treatment has become affordable and advanced with newer improved drugs as initially when magic bullet was launched in India, it used to cost ₹1-1.5 lakh per month and now the cost of the medicine has significantly reduced. The CML medicine is provided free under Ayushman scheme. Dr Pankaj, head of clinical hematology and medical oncology added that the clinical trial was breakthrough as the principles of making this drug have turned fruitful in developing other cancers’ drug as well. The clinical hematology and medical oncology department of PGIMER has a footfall of around 5-6k CML patients in a year and out of these, 300-400 are new patients. The list of CML survivors is growing with PGIMER. On Sunday, around 600 patients and their loved ones came to attend the event. The event was organised in collabroation with the Max Foundation, Friends of Max, Sahayta, and Sanjeevani, non-profit organisations.
