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iti, not her real name, is a 29-year-old woman with breast cancer. When she first discovered the disease, she thought it was only a small lump on her left breast, but it developed into an abscess after several months.

She went to alternative healers because she was afraid that her doctor would recommend a mastectomy and also because she couldn’t afford hospital fees. She thought that if she sought medical attention it would cost a lot of money.

After four months with the alternative healers without any progress and spending a lot of money, she went to a doctor with the cancer already in an advanced stage. Now, she has pain throughout her body and is undergoing chemotherapy, which only a doctor can provide.

Denny, also not his real name, is a 28-year-old father of three children and head of his family. He was diagnosed with bone cancer in his right thigh. When he first noticed the disease, he thought that it was only a blister but later it became so big he could not walk anymore.

Because of his inability to walk, he lost his job as a driver. He has no income and did not have money to see doctors. So by the time he eventually went to a doctor his cancer was also at an advanced stage.

Delay in cancer treatment is a common problem in cancer management. The first reason is because patients seek alternative therapy before they seek medical treatment. A 1998 systematic review of studies assessing cancer prevalence in 13 countries concluded that about 31 percent of patients use some form of complementary or alternative treatment.

Davis et al. in the Journal of Head and Neck Cancer stated that treatment delay was associated with alternative treatment use among US veterans with head and neck cancer. Harold et al stated in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1999 that among women with newly diagnosed early-stage breast cancer, who had been treated with standard therapies, new use of alternative medicine was a marker of greater psychosocial distress and a worse quality of life.

Why is alternative therapy so dangerous? There are some reasons why alternative therapy can be so dangerous to cancer patients. The first reason is because alternative therapy delays treatment. More patients are in an advanced stage when they see doctors because they have first gone to alternative healers.

Some alternative healing methods are toxic to the human body. A lot of alternative therapists are frauds. They fake the pathophysiology of diseases and cancer and mislead patients about the pathophysiology of disease and their treatment.

At an emotional level, alternative healers can temporarily reassure cancer patients that they no longer have cancer. When the patients suddenly discover the alternative treatment is not working and the cancer is already at an advanced stage, the patient becomes depressed and rejects other treatment.

Another reason is alternative therapy can cost a lot of money. A lot of cancer patients still spend a lot of money that is not covered by medical insurance and then switch to social insurance or government health plans when they run out of money.

The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization on The right to the highest attainable standard of health — states that “Furthermore, obligations to respect include a state’s obligation to refrain from prohibiting or impeding traditional preventive care, healing practices and medicines, from marketing unsafe drugs and from applying coercive medical treatments, unless on an exceptional basis for the treatment of mental illness or the prevention and control of communicable diseases. Specific implementations of this article are left to member states.”

In another country, for example Australia, the regulatory guidelines for complementary medicines demand that the pesticides, fumigants, toxic metals, microbial toxins, radionuclides and microbial contaminations present in herbal substances be monitored.

In Indonesia, alternative medicine products are not fully monitored. This leads to uncertainty regarding the chemical content and biological activity of individual doses. This lack of oversight means that alternative health products are vulnerable to contamination.

Government should protect society from the dangerous effects of alternative treatments that are toxic to humans by regulation or by health promotion.

Alternative therapists must be regulated and monitored by the government. If they cannot prove that their treatments are safe, the government should close their practices.

Health is a basic human right in this country, so it is the government’s responsibility to supervise the practice of alternative medicine.

Health organizations, such as the Indonesian Medical Association (IMA) or Indonesian Cancer Foundation, should promote cancer awareness in society. They can organize talk shows or advertisement campaigns about science-based cancer treatment on television, in radio and in the newspapers, and tell people about the danger of unproven cancer treatments.

The Health Ministry can also regulate the wider distribution of oncologists. With more doctors or oncologists equally spread throughout our country, our people can go to the right place and have a better understanding of cancer.

Doctors should also encourage local governments to launch cancer prevention campaigns such as breast self-examination programs or visual inspection with acetic acid to prevent cervical cancer. Because money is one of the reasons why cancer patients leave it too late to seek medical attention, the government should further ensure that cancer treatment can be fully covered by the government and private health insurance schemes.

Finally, more and more cancer patients in Indonesia go to doctors with advanced-stage cancer because they seek the alternative therapy first and delay medical treatment.

So, it is our duty to help people with cancer get the proper treatment through regulation of alternative medicine and cancer awareness programs. Let cancer patients have the best and scientifically proven treatment!

The writer, a general physician, lives in Jakarta.