Welcome to In Conversation, the regular podcast of E-Sharp magazine. Go to e-sharp.e. for free access to all our

podcasts to date. This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation with Deepakana. Deepakana is head of

oncology for the Europe, Middle East, Africa and Canada regions of the

pharmaceutical company MSD.

Deepak, we're going to talk about cancer, obviously, because you are an expert in that field.

I'm guessing that the good news is that in the West, certainly, life expectancy is increasing

every year. but with that goes

a higher incidence of cancer because people are simply living longer. Is that a fair, simplistic

calculation to make? Hello, Paul. First of all, it's great to be here, so thank you very

much for taking the time. And improving the lives of patients with cancer is very very near and dear to me it's a big

reason why i actually joined our oncology organization and i think you're absolutely right you know

we have made some great strides in cancer care the mortality rates actually have gone down

because of a lot of reasons you you know, prevention, better screening,

better diagnosis and better treatments.

But it still remains a challenge because people are getting older, so there is more cancer.

The incidence is increasing, and that is the challenge.

It is a big burden.

So how much did you, how reliance do you now, because since people are more intelligent, they are more,

they have fewer excuses to be ignorant about their own health. How much is screening? How much is

lifestyle choices and how much is the final recourse which is using the kind of pharmaceutical

products that your company invents? I think it's a little bit of all of them.

You know, one is just people are more aware about better lifestyle choices because of all the

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