Eight-year-old Aayat wants to become a doctor
Eight-year-old Aayat, who has spent five years of her life fighting cancer, aspires to become a doctor when she grows up.
Aayat hails from a remote village Chohore in Baramulla and has spent most of her time in various hospitals in Delhi and Kashmir after being diagnosed with thigh cancer.
Tough times fell on the financially constrained family as they did not have money for Aayat's treatment.
"The treatment is very expensive. People are afraid of cancer, if there was a cancer hospital in the valley for the poor, it would have been very helpful", said Abdul Rashid Bhat, father of Aayat.
Jammu and Kashmir does not have any advanced radiotherapy facilities like the 'Radiation Linear Accelerator' or the latest machines for detecting the origin and spread of cancer like a 'Pet Scan'.
According to official figures, more than 18,000 cancer cases were reported in the last three years compared to just 10,000 cases in the three years.
Doctors say the coping mechanism for the disease gets impacted for people living in the conflict zones.
"In disturbed parts of the world, it has been seen that cancer cases do rise, but we need to find out what are the exact reasons, and also the cancer journey becomes tougher in such places because there are other things happening at the same time", said Dr Sameer Kaul, President, Breast Cancer Patients Benefit Foundation.
But now, there have been attempts to change this scenario. India's leading cancer specialists recently held a series brainstorming sessions in Gulmarg and came up with guidelines on managing and providing affordable care to cancer patients through public private partnership.
"This is the time we need to get together, everybody the community, the doctors; the medical community the government to form a common platform, the Gulmarg Declaration is a good example of that sort of an effort", said Dr SVS Deo, Professor and Senior Consultant Surgical Oncology AIIMS.