Funding cancer care

A parliamentary committee, in its latest report, has urged the Centre to declare cancer a notifiable disease nationwide and to levy a special tobacco cess to fund cancer research and care. The message is that without comprehensive data, the fight against one of the country’s fastest-growing health crises is being waged blindfolded.

At present, cancer statistics in India come largely from the National Cancer Registry Programme, which covers only about 18% of the population. Several states already treat cancer as notifiable, but there is no uniform national policy. This patchwork approach makes it impossible to track real-time trends or plan for the infrastructure, doctors, and drugs required to fight the disease. Oral cancer alone claims more than five lives every hour, and is increasingly striking people under 40, a warning sign of lifestyle and environmental factors taking a heavy toll.

The committee has also recommended heavy taxes on tobacco products, with the revenue earmarked for cancer research and treatment. It has highlighted India’s dependence on imported oncology drugs, the shortage of trained oncologists, and the migration of specialists abroad. Its call for compulsory service norms, better salaries for doctors, and higher R&D budgets is both urgent and reasonable. Cancer care is not just a medical issue but a national-capacity issue, one that demands coordinated action between the health, environment and agriculture ministries.

Nowhere is the urgency clearer than in Jammu and Kashmir, where government data show a steady 2–3% annual increase in reported cases since 2021. As the Health Minister Sakina Itoo recently told the Assembly, J&K has recorded over 64,000 cases since 2018, with the Kashmir Valley alone accounting for more than 50,000, nearly four times the number in Jammu. Last year alone, over 7,000 new cases were registered. This is too much to take for an an already fragile healthcare system.

So, the parliament panel declaring cancer notifiable is only the first step. What we need now is to put this into practice. We need to back it with funding, research, and a plan to make treatment accessible in every state. As the data makes it clear, in Kashmir and across the country, the disease is growing faster than our response. The time to act is now.