Kathmandu, June 3 -- Doctors at Patan Hospital instructed the family of Mithu Kumari Sapkota, a lung cancer patient, to bring both the patient and carboplatin, a chemotherapy drug, on Tuesday.

As the country is facing an acute shortage of platinum-based chemotherapy drugs, including carboplatin, which is used in the treatment of various solid tumours, including ovarian, lung, head, neck, and breast cancers, her family members faced a tough time arranging for the medicine.

"My husband and his elder brother struggled a lot to find a single dose of carboplatin," complained Shova Devkota, Sapkota's daughter-in-law. "They used various channels, requested many, to find a single dose of medicine at Kuleshwar."

This is a common problem faced b...