Taking advantage of cancer patients’ expectation for state-of-the-art heavy ion therapies, brokers are charging them extortionate fees for the treatments only available in foreign countries and travel cover.

Some of the cancer patients, who paid over 100 million won ($88,079) to a broker to get the therapy in Germany or in Japan, did not benefit from the expensive remedy and had to return to Korea for additional treatments.

Along with the proton therapy, heavy ion therapies are known to offer excellent therapeutic effects. However, there are only 10 heavy iron therapy systems around the world due to their astronomical cost. Japan has five, Germany, two, China, two, and Italy, one.

In Korea, there are only two proton treatments, available at the National Cancer Center and Samsung Medical Center. Severance Hospital is to introduce the heavy ion therapy system in 2022.

As the heavy ion therapy is not available in Korea, cancer patients visit Japan or Germany with the help of brokers. Brokers help provide not only the therapy but various services including accommodation, translation, and car service while staying overseas. The total charge skyrockets due to such additional costs.

According to a community site used by cancer patients, a heavy ion therapy in Japan costs from 6.5 million yen ($58,403) 9 million yen to per person. In Germany, it goes up to nearly 100 million won.

However, some of them were metastatic patients who would not have much effect even if they spent an astronomical amount of money to receive a heavy ion treatment.

A liver cancer patient had cancer spread to the pelvic bone. Local hospitals recommended a chemotherapy but the patient set up a plan for a heavy ion therapy in Germany. Of the two German hospitals which had the system, one refused to treat the Korean patient due to multiple metastatic cancer. However, the patient received the treatment at the other hospital in Germany through a broker.

However, the patient had to receive additional treatments after returning to Korea because only some of the cancer spread were treated in Germany. The patient paid more than 100 million won to the broker.

Some other patients had a contract with a broker, left for a foreign land to get the heavy ion therapy, but was screened out of the treatment at the overseas hospital and get other therapy recommendations.

“Some multiple cancer patients got treatments for only specific areas and visited us to get other areas treated. In this case, they did not need to get the heavy ion therapy. Its cost-effectiveness is low,” said Kim Tae-hyun, director of the Proton Therapy Center at the National Cancer Center.

Kim said although heavy ion therapies are known to have excellent power to destroy cancerous cells by using heavy particles such as carbon, their accuracy is not high because they affect normal issues around cancerous cells.

“Heavy ion therapies came after proton therapies so they have a fewer clinical case and fewer research results,” Kim added.

“Some of the brokers who take Korean cancer patients to Japan or Germany demand two or three times higher expense than the cost that patients would have spent if they had gone by themselves directly to the hospitals,” said Ahn Gi-jong, head of the Korea Alliance of Patients Organization. “It is the brokers who decide the cost. We need to take measures to prevent any further damage to cancer patients.”

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