COMMENT | Anchored by debt: When cancer holds families hostage

COMMENT | Around one in two households in Southeast Asia with a cancer patient will spend more than a third of their income on treatment.

The Asean Costs in Oncology (ACTION) study, involving almost 10,000 cancer-stricken households in eight low- and middle-income countries, showed 48 percent of patients and their families made catastrophic out-of-pocket cancer-related expenditures within a year after a cancer diagnosis.

Apart from the direct medical expenses incurred from diagnostic scans, anticancer therapies, hospital stays and clinical follow-ups, the study found that...