Tobacco addiction in India is as common as a mosquito bite. Every third person on the road is smoking or chewing tobacco. Every intersection has a bunch of people selling tobacco products to drivers. Every few minutes tobacco products are sold to children well below the permissible age. Every few minutes another person dies of of tobacco related diseases.

Out of all the forms of tobacco abuse – smoking is a hot trend among the upper and middle classes. The rest chew tobacco in various forms. Smoking in workplaces is banned by government law. Smoking in public places if also banned. Smoking on trains and other public transport is also banned. However all these bans exists just on paper. On the ground these rules are broken every minute.

Thanks to insane work pressures in an average Indian firm – most upwardly mobile career conscious individuals take to smoking as a way of relieving stress and interacting with superiors. The image of the cavalier go-getter smoking his way through meeting and deals is the image that gets imprinted in their minds. This image is reinforced by age old stereotypes in the advertising industry – generated by the tobacco companies.

Lung cancer has reached alarming proportions in India already. And the numbers are getting worse by the day. In a country of over a billion people, lung cancer will probably become the only antidote to the population problem! Such is the scale of this affliction that hospitals treating such diseases are overloaded many times over. All this however is not enough to wake up the slumbering Indian government.

There is rarely a case where licences for selling tobacco products are enforced. Errant commoners smoking on trains and other public places are conveniently ignored. In fact many a times a policeman is seen offending the law in various places. Tobacco companies are beyond reproach. Their “compliance” by providing lung cancer photos on their cigarette packs is more of a joke. The obscure black and white photos have a red dot – signifying the cancer. The picture is like an old photo from your grandma’s album.

If this scourge is not tackled in the near future – vast sections of the Indian population will become crippled. The economic burden of such unhealthy individuals will be a collective cost that all healthy Indians will also have to bear. However the bigger picture is swept under the carpet of petty profiteering.

It seems that the greatest risk factor for developing this type of cancer is exposure to x-rays. If a woman has had radiation therapy to the pelvic area, her risk for developing uterine sarcoma cancer is increased significantly.

Women who have taken the drug tamoxifen for breast cancer are also at a much higher risk for developing the disease. Women who have taken this drug need to have regular pelvic examinations and report any abnormal bleeding to their doctors immediately.

Now, it is very important to know that every growth in the uterus after menopause is NOT cancerous. There are many, many more benign (noncancerous) growths than malignant ones diagnosed every year.

There is also treatment for uterine sarcoma cancer. Like all cancer, the earlier it is diagnosed, the better the chances are that the patient will make a full recovery. It is classified into four stages. The first stage is the mildest form that is confined to the uterus itself. The fourth stage means that the cancer cells have spread beyond the pelvic area.

There are four basic treatments for uterine sarcoma cancer; surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and hormone therapy. The most frequently used beginning treatment for uterine sarcoma cancer is surgery, and even if the surgeon removes all visible cancer cells, surgery is most often followed by chemotherapy and radiation therapy in an attempt to kill cancer cells that the surgeon didn’t remove.