KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 1 — In a collaboration with KALSIS, Beacon Hospital is offering low-dose CT scans (LDCT) to screen for lung cancer at just RM309 from today (September 1) until November 30.
The public can contact the medical enquiries team at Beacon Hospital, a private hospital in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, at +6012-328 6913 for booking. Alternatively, they may purchase it online through Beacon Hospital’s e-shop. A free teleconsultation will be provided if there are abnormal results.
KALSIS founder and CEO Jonathan Teoh said the average cost of LDCT in private hospitals is RM600, which may be unaffordable to some.
“So what we’ve done is – for this podcast and for a campaign that runs from today through till end November – collaborating with Beacon Hospital to bring in a special package for low-dose CT scans that’s a lot more affordable,” Teoh told a Cancer Matters podcast by the National Cancer Society Malaysia (NCSM) aired last Thursday.
The podcast episode examined the dual challenges of lung health and financial burdens often accompanying treatment, particularly for late-stage diagnoses.
“So 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’t do it because you’d 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,” Teoh said.
KALSIS is an innovative health and retirement financing scheme that converts senior citizens’ home equity into liquidity for medical treatment and lifetime living expenses – without needing to move.
Teoh said KALSIS’ mission is to expand health care access and strengthen secondary prevention.
“Beyond 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,” Teoh told CodeBlue.
“While 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.”
Late-Stage Lung Cancer Costs RM150,000-RM300,000 Annually In Direct, Indirect Costs
At NCSM’s 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.
But five-year survival rates drop to five to 20 per cent for stage four lung cancer.
“If lung cancer is diagnosed in the early stage, this reduces the cost; it’s five to 15 times lower than later stages,” said Dr Vijayan at the podcast hosted by NCSM managing director Assoc Prof Dr M. Murallitharan.
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.
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.
Dr Vijayan said targeted therapy provides late-stage lung cancer patients an additional 23 to 60 months of survival without disease progression.
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.
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.
“If a patient requires just chemotherapy alone…most probably, the patient will spend around RM1,000 to RM2,000. But most studies show that patients will not survive much longer,” he said.
“With the immunotherapy arm, you need to change to first line, second line, third line, fourth line, fifth line, sixth line, and even seventh line.”
KALSIS: Fourth Pillar Of Health Care Financing From Capital Markets
In response to Dr Murallitharan’s question about how KALSIS can help finance expensive illnesses like lung cancer, Teoh described KALSIS as the “fourth pillar” in health care financing, after government, insurance, and out-of-pocket sources of funding.
“We’re 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,” said Teoh.
Retirees don’t have Social Security Organisation (Socso) coverage either. They also may not be able to afford retaining personal health insurance coverage due to escalating premiums.
KALSIS offers retirees a solution of unlocking home equity to fund cancer treatment and retirement expenses throughout their life, without needing to move.
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.
KALSIS participants are first paid 10 per cent of the market value of their property after it’s sold to the scheme. “So 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.”
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’s death, KALSIS will continue paying the surviving spouse; the scheme will only end upon the spouse’s death.
“This could easily be for 10, 20, or 30 years,” said Teoh.
He pointed out that the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), the world’s 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.
“What 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,” said Teoh, whose family started social enterprises in Malaysia in 2006, long before CSR became a trend.
“What we’re doing is channelling that from institutional investors behind KALSIS to effect such outcomes for systemic good.
“What we want to do is look at how we can harness today’s capital markets to better close the cancer care gap at scale because we realise that the government can only do so much.”
Most Early Lung Cancer Cases Asymptomatic
Dr Vijayan said lung cancer is surging, both in Malaysia and around the world. According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia’s (DOSM) 2024 report on causes of death in Malaysia, trachea, bronchus, and lung cancer is the fifth cause of death.
He revealed that 60 per cent to 70 per cent of early lung cancer cases actually show no symptoms, unlike breast cancer that appears as lumps in the breast.
When Teoh announced the KALSIS-Beacon Hospital campaign providing LDCT at just RM309, just over half of the average RM600 cost, Dr Muralli described early investment in prevention as a “no-brainer.”
Dr Vijayan noted that Japan and the United Kingdom (UK) reduced 32 per cent and 20 per cent of late-stage lung cancer cases with low-risk CT scans, respectively.
“So I think in the Malaysian perspective, even for early lung cancer, awareness programmes should be increased significantly so that the number of cases we diagnose with late cancer will eventually reduce,” he said.
About 70 per cent of lung cancer cases in Malaysia are diagnosed in the late stages. Dr Vijayan added that in the MOH’s cancer budget, about 65 per cent to 70 per cent is spent on oncology drugs but only 10 per cent for early lung cancer.
“Of course, the government will eventually save costs if many cases are detected at an early stage. Eventually, it will benefit the patients as well.”
Beacon Hospital: Giving Everyone A Fair Chance For More Healthy Years
Beacon Hospital CEO Hoe Cheah How said his hospital believes that early detection saves lives.
“By making advanced screening such as LDCT more accessible and affordable, we’re removing barriers so more people can take action before it’s too late,” Hoe told CodeBlue.
“This isn’t just about tests — it’s about giving every person a fair chance for more healthy years ahead with their loved ones.
“This initiative reflects our ongoing commitment to community well-being and to setting new standards in accessible, high-quality private health care — that’s the heart of what we do at Beacon Hospital.”
