Cancer continues to be one of the most dreaded diseases known to man with no drug available for its total cure. The drugs so far discovered by the pharmaceutical companies can only provide some relief and prolong the life of the patient at very high treatment costs. The disease which used to be seen mostly among the affluent people some years ago, is affecting all classes today. Neither government nor any private bodies have the exact number of people suffering from this disease in the country. The Cancer Patients Aid Association is one private organisation which is doing some charitable work for the cause of poor cancer patients in India. Considering the prohibitive cost of treatment of the disease and economic levels of the growing number of poor patients, government and pharmaceutical companies have a responsibility to make available such drugs at affordable prices. Look at the current price of a leukaemia drug, imatinib mesylate (Glivec), marketed by Swiss multinational, Novartis. The Novartis' drug costs Rs 120,000 for an year's treatment whereas the cost comes to only about Rs 10,000 for treating with generics produced by domestic pharma companies. With the grant of Exclusive Marketing Rights to Novartis last year and subsequent litigations, most of the Indian companies had to discontinue their imatinib mesylate brands. The Hyderabad based Natco, however continues to market its product as that is the only company which obtained a stay against Novartis' EMR. As a good number of patients are not able to procure Natco's product, they have no option but to go for the expensive treatment of Novartis as CPAA is not able to support or subsidise all leukaemia patients. And Novartis has a Glivec International Patient Assistance Programme for the benefit of poor patients worldwide but not many patients in India are benefited out of the scheme. Novartis says that Glivec is given totally free to those patients who are not insured and are not getting reimbursed the cost of treatment. By putting this condition a patient covered by Employee State Insurance Scheme is disqualified to be benefited under GIPAP as most of the low paid employees both in the public and private sectors are covered by ESIS. It is well known that the coverage under ESIS is extremely nominal. If Novartis is serious to help poor cancer patients, it has to realistically assess the economic conditions of the patients before denying the benefit under some pretexts. The report of a recent government move to bring down the prices of anti cancer drugs, in this context, has to be welcomed. The department of chemicals and petrochemicals is in the process of preparing a list of cancer drugs to be included under DPCO. The move is in response to a spate of complaints about the availability and affordability of cancer drugs to the department in recent months.