New Delhi, June 2 (IANS): The brother of a blood cancer patient has moved the Delhi High Court seeking directions to AIIMS to provide him free and continuous treatment, saying he cannot afford the same.

The plea said 30-year-old Satish has been undergoing chemotherapy at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and his family has already spent around Rs.3 lakh on treatment.

The plea -- by Satish's brother Anand Kumar Morya, filed through advocate Ashok Aggarwal -- said Satish, a resident of Mathura who used to run a photocopy-cum-lamination shop, was diagnosed with Burkitt's Leukemia, a form of blood cancer, in March, barely three months after his marriage.

Due to his condition, the shop had to be closed down and machines sold off to bear the cost of treatment, said the plea.

Satish's father, a class-IV railway employee with a monthly salary of Rs.12,000, was now the sole earning member in a family of six, it said.

The patient's father has exhausted all his savings on the treatment, and even his Provident Fund account is left with a meagre balance of Rs.24,550, said the petition.

"They (the family) have been given an additional expenditure estimate of Rs.6 lakh recently, which they are unable to bear. The petition thus seeks continuation of treatment at AIIMS free of cost in order to save Satish's life," it said.

The plea said the family was not in a position to bear the expenditure and, under such circumstances, Satish's chemotherapy was likely to get interrupted and discontinuation of treatment would lead to an anomalous situation by reversing the gains of treatment already given and ultimately endangering the patient's life.

Pointing out that Satish has been responding well to the treatment and his condition has improved, the plea said the family had, in representations on May 1 and 13 to the AIIMS director, requested free continuation of treatment, but no response has been received so far.