In a bid to standardize patient care and have uniform practices across the country, an eminent body of oncologists has issued the first Indian guidelines on infections in cancer patients or Febrile Neutropenia. These guidelines, supported by Pfizer Ltd., were released by Sunil Dutt, Member of Parliament at the 5th International Conference on Emerging Concepts in Cancer held in New Delhi on December 13, 2003.

The guidelines have been endorsed by the Indian Society of Medical and Paediatric Oncology (ISMPO) and reviewed by Dr Gerald Bodey, Emeritus professor, Medical Oncology a the MD Andersen Cancer Center Texas, USA a world renowned authority on the subject.

The guidelines have been written based on published Indian studies on management of febrile neutropenia (fever related to abnormally low neutrophil count). The guidelines have also taken into consideration the unique socioeconomic conditions in the country.

Pfizer Ltd. will disseminate these guidelines free of cost to all medical colleges and primary health care centres, members of the ISMPO and all practitioners of this highly skilled science. Pfizer helped in providing an unrestricted educational grant, which helped in organizing meetings of the core committee members and publication of this guideline.

"The guidelines are a distillate of the combined years of experience, training and knowledge of the leading practitioners of this science of medical oncology, all of whom are opinion leaders and eminent members of the ISMPO." said Dr SH Advani, former chief of Medical Oncology at Tata Memorial and now head, Department of Oncology at Jaslok hospital and Medical Research Centre, Mumbai who chaired the pioneering initiative.

Commenting about Pfizer India's role, Dr S Mukherjee, sr director, Medical said, "Pfizer has attempted to contribute to patient care by coordinating with eminent experts to put together guidelines for management that would be relevant for the country, but more importantly by generation of epidemiological data over the years which forms a major part of the foundation on which these guidelines are based.”