Asia's first website on pancreatic cancer www.pancreaticcancerindia.com has been launched at Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai. It aims to provide a comprehensive platform for instilling awareness on pancreatic and peri ampullary cancer amongst the patients, care givers and healthcare professionals.

The new website, which is expected to provide interactive platform for the people with queries on the disease, was launched by Dr K A Dishaw, Director, Tata Memorial Centre.

The site contains basic explanation about the diseases, in-depth details about its growth put in simple words and diagrammatic presentation as well. List of institutions in India that provide treatment and surgeries for the disease has also been provided.

"Most of the patients we come across know little about their disease. Cancer, it detected at an early stage, can be cured completely and it is that what we aim at. The site has been uploaded with stage wise symptoms to create awareness among the masses so that the tumour can be detected at an early stage and is treated as soon as possible," said Dr Shailesh V Shrikhande of surgical oncology department, Tata Memorial Hospital, who is one of the chief coordinators of the site.

Dr Shrikhande informed, "With the launch of the website, we have taken the first step towards creating awareness about the disease. We will proceed by updating data at websites and interacting with people whoever tries to contact us. Further we plan to have the website in regional languages so that the information reaches more people in simpler way. We accept that creating a website is not cent per cent approved way to create awareness in India, but we hope it to be beneficial to those who access the internet and come across the website, and the visitors carry forward the information they received from our website."

Contact details of chief coordinators have been given at the site to facilitate interaction, wherein patients, medical students or medical practitioners can clear their queries through emails. The medical practitioners can also upload their set of information or any interesting case they have come across.

The website is a collaborative work between the editorial team, Indegene Life Sciences and Roche Scientific Company (India) Pvt Ltd.