Humayun Ahmed flies to New York for cancer treatment

Popular writer Humayun Ahmed flew to New York yesterday morning for the treatment of colon cancer, diagnosed at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore recently.
“Just a few days back he went to Mount Elizabeth Hospital for a routine check up. There the doctors found a cancerous tumor in his colon. But he did not want to undergo treatment there.
“That is why he came back to the country and flew for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center without any delay,” said Dr Muhammad Zafar Iqbal, noted writer and professor of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology.
Dr Zafar, Humayun's younger brother, said after an open heart surgery at Mount Elizabeth Hospital a few years back, Humayun used to go there from time to time for routine check ups. Humayun's wife and two sons also went with him.
According to oncologists, most tumors in the colon are cancerous. But the rate of colon cancer is low in Bangladesh compared to lung, oral, head-neck and oesophagal cancer.
“But in the context of mortality, for men, colon cancer is perilous after lung cancer,” said Prof Akram Hussain of LabAid, adding that surgery is the first treatment of colon cancer.
Cure from this cancer depends on in which stage the tumor is diagnosed, said the experts.
Humayun, now a full-time author and movie-maker, was a professor of the Department of Chemistry at University of Dhaka.
After publication of his first novel Nondito Noroke, he emerged as one of the most prominent novelist and story-writer of Bangla literature in the 1970s.
He also achieved success as a screenwriter for television since the late 1980s. In the early 1990s, he entered the movie world and proved himself to be a successful filmmaker.
Humayun received Ekushey Podok in 1994, National Film Award and many other awards.