New Delhi, India – In a crowded ward of New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), India’s premier public hospital, a mother sits quietly beside her 29-year-old son, Piyush Singh*. Diagnosed with stomach cancer a year ago, Singh has already undergone five rounds of chemotherapy. He now lies in the hospital’s palliative care unit, where the goal is no longer to cure the disease but to relieve pain and preserve his dignity.
But where shall we go?” asks his mother. The doctors are not telling us anything. I don’t know what to do next.” Piyush’s family is not asking for his life to end.
They simply don’t know what comes when treatment fails. A few floors away, Aryan* has come to AIIMS from Auraiya, a small town in Uttar Pradesh state, to accompany his 40-year-old brother Amit (name changed), who has been battling mouth cancer for four years. Two surgeries, radiation and two rounds of chemotherapy later, doctors say there is little hope of him surviving.
The final checkup has been done. There is nothing more left to try. So it is clear now.” He plans to take Amit to his rented flat in Gurgaon and give him whatever painkillers he has been prescribed.
Beyond that, he has no plan, because no one has given him one. I don’t know how to ease his pain. I have nothing apart from the medicines I got today,” he said.
Piyush and Amit are no exceptions. They represent a reality that many Indians are coming to terms with – with little institutional help. India recorded an estimated 1.56 million new cancer cases in 2024, according to an Indian Council of Medical Research study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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