The podcast episode examined the dual challenges of lung health and financial burdens often accompanying treatment, particularly for late-stage diagnoses.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the idea is that we make it a lot more accessible to people to get diagnosed, but also understand what are the costs involved if you don\u2019t do it because you\u2019d rather spend a few hundred ringgit screening regularly than to have to pay thousands of ringgit if you are unlucky to get lung cancer and have it treated,\u201d Teoh said.<\/p>\n
KALSIS is an innovative health and retirement financing scheme that converts senior citizens\u2019 home equity into liquidity for medical treatment and lifetime living expenses \u2013 without needing to move.<\/p>\n
Teoh said KALSIS\u2019 mission is to expand health care access and strengthen secondary prevention.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeyond helping seniors battling cancer unlock the value of their homes to fund treatment and retirement needs, we recognise the urgent need to bolster secondary prevention to raise our cancer survival rates, which still lag behind many of our regional peers,\u201d Teoh told CodeBlue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile low-dose CT scans remain the gold standard for lung health diagnosis, cost has long been a barrier. Through our partnership with Beacon Hospital, we have now made LDCT screening more affordable and accessible to the public, helping to reduce both the cost and burden of treatment, especially when cancer is detected early.\u201d<\/p>\n
Late-Stage Lung Cancer Costs RM150,000-RM300,000 Annually In Direct, Indirect Costs<\/strong><\/p>\n At NCSM\u2019s Cancer Matters podcast, Dr Vijayan Munusamy, a consultant chest physician at Universiti Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC), revealed that lung cancer actually has a 90 per cent curative possibility if it is detected in the first stage, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) study.<\/p>\n But five-year survival rates drop to five to 20 per cent for stage four lung cancer.<\/p>\n \u201cIf lung cancer is diagnosed in the early stage, this reduces the cost; it\u2019s five to 15 times lower than later stages,\u201d said Dr Vijayan at the podcast hosted by NCSM managing director Assoc Prof Dr M. Murallitharan.<\/p>\n The cost of a lung lobectomy to remove a section of your lung, a common surgery for treating non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in its early stages, is around RM5,000 to RM8,000 in public health care and RM25,000 to RM30,000 in the private sector.<\/p>\n However, for a lung cancer patient presenting at the late stages of three and four, direct and indirect costs skyrocket up to RM150,000 to RM300,000 per annum. Direct costs are medical costs, whereas indirect costs include transport, psychosocial, and caregivers taking off work.<\/p>\n Dr Vijayan said targeted therapy provides late-stage lung cancer patients an additional 23 to 60 months of survival without disease progression.<\/p>\n Although the cheapest targeted therapies can be obtained for RM400 a month, patients need to upgrade their treatment from first-generation TKIs, a type of targeted therapy, to second-generation TKIs and so on as their disease progresses.<\/p>\n Higher-end TKIs, according to Dr Vijayan, cost approximately RM6,000 a month. Immunotherapy is even more expensive, with pembrolizumab costing RM17,000 a month.<\/p>\n \u201cIf a patient requires just chemotherapy alone\u2026most probably, the patient will spend around RM1,000 to RM2,000. But most studies show that patients will not survive much longer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWith the immunotherapy arm, you need to change to first line, second line, third line, fourth line, fifth line, sixth line, and even seventh line.\u201d<\/p>\n KALSIS: Fourth Pillar Of Health Care Financing From Capital Markets<\/strong><\/p>\n In response to Dr Murallitharan\u2019s question about how KALSIS can help finance expensive illnesses like lung cancer, Teoh described KALSIS as the \u201cfourth pillar\u201d in health care financing, after government, insurance, and out-of-pocket sources of funding.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re coming as the fourth pillar from the capital markets side to put more options on the table for seniors, especially those aged 60 and above, where we see a lot more incidences of lung cancer, but who unfortunately may not have insurance coverage because they either lapsed or left their employers,\u201d said Teoh.<\/p>\n Retirees don\u2019t have Social Security Organisation (Socso) coverage either. They also may not be able to afford retaining personal health insurance coverage due to escalating premiums.<\/p>\n KALSIS offers retirees a solution of unlocking home equity to fund cancer treatment and retirement expenses throughout their life, without needing to move.<\/p>\n Teoh explained that KALSIS was designed to help fund cutting-edge medicines by getting an understanding of the costs from patient assistance programmes offered by pharmaceutical companies to self-paying patients.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n KALSIS participants are first paid 10 per cent of the market value of their property after it\u2019s sold to the scheme. \u201cSo an RM1.5 million home can immediately fund RM150,000, which matches what Dr Vijayan said for many cancer indications in combination with patient assistance programmes.\u201d<\/p>\n Subsequently, KALSIS pays participants between 3.27 per cent and 4 per cent of the transacted property value for as long as they are alive. Upon the participant\u2019s death, KALSIS will continue paying the surviving spouse; the scheme will only end upon the spouse\u2019s death.<\/p>\n \u201cThis could easily be for 10, 20, or 30 years,\u201d said Teoh.<\/p>\n He pointed out that the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), the world\u2019s oldest and largest global membership organisation for cancer, sees KALSIS as a global first in harnessing home equity release and capital markets to control cancer.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I want to share with people is that capital markets are a very powerful tool if wielded for good. Imagine, in 2024, capital markets were worth RM4.2 trillion; 0.1 per cent is RM4.2 billion that can be wielded to create good outcomes,\u201d said Teoh, whose family started social enterprises in Malaysia in 2006, long before CSR became a trend.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re doing is channelling that from institutional investors behind KALSIS to effect such outcomes for systemic good.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we want to do is look at how we can harness today\u2019s capital markets to better close the cancer care gap at scale because we realise that the government can only do so much.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/cancer_matters_podcast_with_kalsis.jpg\")
From left: National Cancer Society Malaysia (NCSM) managing director Assoc Prof Dr M. Murallitharan, consultant chest physician Dr Vijayan Munusamy, and KALSIS founder and CEO Jonathan Teoh speak at the Cancer Matters podcast. Photo courtesy of Cancer Matters.<\/p>\n
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