Every year nearly 5,00,000 people die of cancer in India, but there are only 1,600 cancer specialists in the country, according to the alarming statistics coming from the Union Health Ministry. What’s worse is that a 20 per cent surge in cancer cases is expected by the end of the decade. Across the medical profession, the doctor patient ratio is abysmally low throughout the country but especially glaring in cancer care. Dr SH Advani, one of India’s top oncologists who pioneered the stem cell transplant in the 1970s, still sees around 80 to 100 patients a day. In America, doctors don’t see more than 10 patients a day.