The National Cancer Registry Programme (NCRP) has chalked out plans to establish systematic data on cancer by urging the state government to declare it a 'notified disease'. This will be a first of its kind initiative in the country by a state government as the NCRP has identified Karnataka having a sound information technology base and its information infrastructure is much better compared to other states.

In order to set up the registry, the state government should declare cancer as a non-communicable disease and as a notified disease. It needs to make it mandatory for all hospitals and diagnostic centres attending to cancer patients to submit case details to the registry, which would act as the nodal agency for the state, Dr A Nandakumar, NCRP head for Karnataka, told Pharmabiz.

Currently only Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology (KMIO) maintains a registry which gives details of the patients. The registry here provides details of the government onco-care centre which is Kidwai and the peripheral medical centres identified for radiation treatment

Dr Nandakumar said the data would be supplied from the registry to the country's central data house which would maintain the entire country's information regarding the number of cancer patients, type of cancer, management protocol and treatment schedules, besides preventive methods and awareness tips on each cancer.

This would help in maintaining a systematic record of each cancer case in the country, which could help oncologists study cases to find ways to deal with the case on hand, he said.

The cancer registry programme was started in 1982, but a systematic documentation of the nature of cases with regards to geographical and culture-related occurrences of different types of cancer is not available to oncologists in the country.

"But the disease notification cannot be done directly at the centre as health is a state subject, and can be initiated only at the state-level," he said.

"He said some western countries had declared cancer as a notified disease to systematically document data on it. But India, with a billion-plus population and about eight lakh cancer cases added every year, still relied on ambiguous data.

Kalpana Kar, director, Cancer Patients Aid Association (CPAA), informed that, in India a large number of cancer cases can be attributed to environmental degradation, diet and lifestyle.

CPAA estimates indicate that every year there are about 5.5 lakh deaths due to cancer in the country, with about 20.5 lakh cancer patients at any given point of time.

The lack of awareness among the public about cancer led to at least 70 per cent of the cases being diagnosed in the last stages, and the total treatment cost per patient is about Rs.3.5 lakh.