Cancer is fast becoming one of Pakistan’s gravest and least acknowledged public-health emergencies. It is not only a disease of hospitals and laboratories; it is a crisis of families, household incomes and social protection. For millions of Pakistanis below the poverty line or in the lower-middle-income bracket, a diagnosis marks the start of a financial struggle that runs alongside the fight for survival.

GLOBOCAN 2022 estimated 185,748 new cancer cases and 118,631 cancer deaths in Pakistan in that year. Worldwide, about 20 million new cases and 9.7 million deaths were recorded, and new cases are projected to exceed 35 million by 2050. Pakistan cannot meet this burden with scattered, hospital-by-hospital efforts. It needs an integrated national strategy with one directing authority.

The real question is no longer whether Pakistan has capable oncologists and modern hospitals; it has both. The question is whether a poor patient in Faisalabad, Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan, rural Sindh, Balochistan or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa can obtain early diagnosis, reach a specialised centre and complete treatment without being financially destroyed.

The poor patient fights two battles.

A poor family fights cancer and then fights the cost of cancer. The diagnostic journey alone may involve biopsy, histopathology, molecular testing, CT or MRI and PET-CT; treatment may then demand surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted therapy or hormonal therapy. The hidden costs are equally cruel. A patient from a distant district needs transport, lodging and food for weeks, while a daily-wage earner loses income. Families borrow, sell livestock, jewellery or land, or quietly abandon treatment. The hospital is free, but the test is not. The treatment is free, but the medicine is unavailable. That is not genuine universal cancer care. Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif has spoken openly of the grief of losing her mother to cancer, and of how heavily the cost of treatment falls on ordinary families. She has turned that personal loss into public resolve. The Chief Minister’s Special Initiative for Cancer Patients now provides free diagnosis, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery and medicines at an annual cost of about Rs13 billion, with a dedicated card covering up to Rs1 million per patient.

On 18 September 2026, she inaugurated at Nishtar Hospital Multan a 100-bed cancer centre, a PET-CT and cyclotron facility and a cryoablation centre, bringing modern staging........

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