Pfizer works closely with non-profit organizations, foundations, professional organizations, policymakers, and patient advocacy groups to meet the needs of cancer patients and their families.
Highlights:
- Partnerships with Tata Trusts, Doctors for You, TISS, CanSupport, VCare, Tata Memorial Hospital, among others, for cancer care initiatives
- 117,736 patients screened for cancer through community outreach programs
- More than 50,000 caregivers have undergone the counselling sessions
- 67,303 assisted in application to government funds
MUMBAI: In Commemoration of World Cancer Day 2023, Pfizer India announced today that it has been able to reach over 6,00,000 beneficiaries through partnerships with various institutions in India for cancer care programs. Pfizer India has collaborated with close to a dozen leading institutions such as Tata Trusts, Doctors for You, Impacct Foundation -Tata Memorial Hospital (supporting pediatric cancer care), CanSupport, V-Care and Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai for capacity building and support for HCPs, patients and caretakers. Keeping patient-centricity at the core of their actions, the company has introduced different CSR programs to address key touch points of cancer treatment such as – patient support and navigation helpdesks, toll free numbers for patients, early detection, cancer prevention and improving access and affordability to cancer care and treatment.
Pfizer’s current oncology portfolio covers treatments and therapies for a range of cancers including breast, lung, genitourinary, and hematology with a robust pipeline of biologics and immune-oncology agents that can change the treatment paradigm and reduce the impact of the disease burden.
“The prevalence of diseases such as cancers and tumors are progressive in nature making it essential to provide innovative and quality medicine, treatments, and care. Pfizer works closely with non-profit organizations, foundations, professional organizations, policymakers, and patient advocacy groups to meet the needs of cancer patients and their families. We aim to positively impact more and more patients as we continue to develop breakthrough innovations and cancer research that will transform the cancer treatment landscape,” said, Sharad Goswami, Senior Director, Corporate Affairs, Pfizer India.
Some of the key initiatives and partnerships undertaken by Pfizer in India are:
Project Aastha (a Pfizer Limited initiative) is an ongoing partnership between Pfizer and Doctors for You (a pan-India humanitarian organization) to assist cancer patients throughout the country. The company currently has established 13 helpdesks across leading hospitals and aims to aims to provide cancer care service to close the care gap across various states in India.
More than 90,000 patients have been screened so far through a collaboration with Tata Trusts cancer care program (a Pfizer Limited initiative). The program also involved training of community health workers in Diphu and Silchar in Assam; Ranchi in Jharkhand, and Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh.
Additionally, Pfizer has also managed to reach over 70,000 patients across tier 2 cities such as Ranchi, Pondicherry, Muzaffarpur, Rajkot, Varanasi, Raipur, Assam, and Tirupati via Aastha helpdesks, community outreach, virtual help desks, and health and wellness Kiosks.
Dr. Sanjiv Chopra – Chief Executive, Tata Trusts Cancer Care Program, said, “Collaborating with Pfizer has been fruitful for our mission to work across the entire spectrum of cancer care. Our efforts have helped in multiple ways from raising awareness, to promoting screening and early detection as well as supporting of continuum of care. We are confident that our initiative will continue to support the national endeavour to reduce the cancer burden.”
Pfizer has also introduced ‘train the trainer’ program in collaboration with CanSupport a leading non-profit in India; training over 1800 Anganwadi workers on self-breast examination techniques and coaching sessions on breast cancer awareness. Another initiative called Ummeed—a helpdesk, in collaboration with the NGO Vcare, has supported over 4000 patients and their families get the financial assistance, accommodation, counselling and family support they need to make their treatment journey less daunting. Additionally, 148 children have been supported through Impacct Foundation an initiative of Tata Memorial Hospital for pediatric cancer care. Pfizer is committed to continuing these programs to reach an even larger patient base in the future.
As Pfizer works towards supporting healthcare innovation, it has partnered with close to 15 government and private institutions, including Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog, AGNIi, Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT), IIT-Delhi, etc, to support start-ups and their innovations in digital health and oncology. Three healthcare start-ups with innovations in oncology include Oncophenomics Life Sciences Pvt Ltd., which has developed a tumour-informed liquid biopsy CGP test that helps circumvent the issues of non-approachable biopsy regions; Pragmatech Healthcare Solutions Pvt.’s CERVICHECK™ Kit provides a clinically conclusive and comprehensive solution for effective preventive cervical cancer screening implementation in a low resource setting, by addressing India-centric challenges of low-recall and drop-outs; and Tera Lumen Solutions Pvt Ltd., which has developed a non-invasive imaging device that can detect accurate cancer margins intraoperatively and rapidly (within ten minutes of surgery).
