A woman undergoing treatment for abdominal pain suddenly discovers that she has advanced-stage ovarian cancer. Treatment begins at a cancer centre in Kolkata. While battling the disease, patients often find themselves confronting not only physical suffering but also devastating financial distress. Savings are exhausted, jewellery has to be sold, and sometimes land or houses have to be mortgaged. Money set aside for children’s education, marriage expenses or future security disappears at hospital counters. Even after treatment ends, the wounds of this financial devastation do not heal easily.

Illness does not merely damage the body; its impact spreads across the present and future of the entire family. Often, the most brutal cost of this suffering is written on the price tag of a medicine. This reality becomes particularly harsh in the treatment of life-threatening diseases such as cancer. Recent observations by the Supreme Court on drug pricing have once again brought this uncomfortable truth into focus. A cancer medicine is reportedly being supplied to retailers at Rs 2,700, while its maximum retail price (MRP) is Rs 29,000. In other words, there is a tenfold difference between the supply price and the printed retail price. On September 29, a Supreme Court Bench comprising Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta questioned the reason for this enormous........

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