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Comment by shmde | Hacker News Reader

Seema is the wife of the founder of one of the biggest online stock brokerage firm called Zerodha.

Her husband is a billionaire and she has access to some of the best healthcare out there. Not that many people from India get a mamogram on a regular basis. So her husband's wealth must have helped her with the screening that helped her to diagnose breast cancer at an early stage.

Her husband being a billionaire is besides the point.

Your conclusion doesn't follow your premise. It's at best a speculation.

Do you think only billionaires in India get diagnosed with cancer, and the remaining cases go undiagnosed?

Both billionaires and non-billionares in India get diagnosed with cancer at an early stage. Sure, plenty go undiagnosed as well, and there are plenty of late diagnosis as well.

(The final outcome in the end is a different question though).

The idea is that as her husband is a billionaire, she had access to better healthcare and more likely to undergo screening. I know many breast cancer patients from India and almost none of them underwent regular screening, and as a result all of them caught the disease as it had progressed a lot more than the case of Seema. As she had access to regular screening, and got diagnosed at a earlier stage, her prognosis was a lot better than for the average upper class Indian with access to quality medical insurance. You must also consider the fact that most medical insurance in India dont cover breast cancer screening.

How does it change anything in the article?

Perspective. This is a cancer story of someone well-to-do and is very likely not to match a lot of folks' experience.

I don’t see many articles about a homeless guy with cancer making the front page of HN. You’re right it doesn’t change the article, but knowing the context helps us understand how we ended up reading it. And then helps us question the truth of the article.

If they are in the US, the homeless guy is more likely to simply die instead of being able to get treatment. The homeless guy couldn't have gotten a preventative scan to catch it, after all, and even if he felt it, what would he do about it?

Poverty - or lack thereof - changes the story itself because not everywhere cares about its people.

Exactly, who cares who's wife she is. Steve Jobs was one of the richest in the world but still died of cancer fairly young unfortunately. It's a deadly disease that affects millions every year and unfortunate thing is that we still don't have a guaranteed cure.

It doesn't, but I found it interesting to know.

> I have been getting a full-body health check-up done regularly for many years. > In my annual checkup the year before..

Thanks that explains it. I was wondering how many people in India could afford regular health checkups and preventative care.

Not many. Also awareness is extremely low. Couple it with low income, extremely low number of hospitals and doctors. And when you move away from metros the number decreases from less to close to zero and most of the non metro hospital/clinics are essentially scam shops. Eventually you’d just want to not even consider all this and just settle for really bad.

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