Cancer is turning into one of the fastest-growing public health problems in Jammu and Kashmir, and the administration is drafting a plan to meet it. On Monday, July 13, Chief Secretary Atal Dulloo chaired a meeting in Srinagar to review the draft Cancer Care Strategy. Present were the Director of SKIMS, the Mission Director of the National Health Mission, the Director of the Tata Memorial Centre in Chandigarh, the principals of the government medical colleges and other oncology experts.
The strategy was prepared by the Health and Medical Education Department with input from oncology specialists and national institutions. It covers prevention, early detection, screening, diagnosis, treatment, palliative care, rehabilitation and research, along with training and digital health tools. One stated aim is to keep patients from having to leave the Union Territory for advanced treatment.
Dulloo called for a coordinated, evidence-based and patient-centric response. He told the Health Department to carry it out in phases, on a fixed timeline, with regular monitoring and measurable outcomes. “The objective is to make quality diagnostic and treatment facilities available closer to patients, significantly reducing the need for them to travel long distances for cancer care,” he said.
Labs, scanners and staff
The draft proposes molecular oncology laboratories in the government medical colleges, equipped for molecular pathology, immunohistochemistry, genomic profiling and next-generation sequencing. Officials said proposals for selected labs have already gone to the Indian Council of Medical Research under its DiaMONDs Project, and that more funding is being sought to extend them.
Imaging would grow in stages: mammography units, PET-CT scanners, MRI, gamma cameras and endoscopy services. Dulloo also went through proposals to expand radiotherapy, strengthen surgical oncology, add bone marrow and stem cell transplant units, and set up multidisciplinary oncology teams in the major tertiary hospitals.
He asked for preventive oncology frameworks in every government medical college, and for phased training of specialist doctors and Radiation Safety Officer-certified staff while equipment is upgraded.
Each expert committee under the strategy has to produce its own time-bound implementation plan. An Apex Committee chaired by Dr Sudeep Gupta, Director of the Tata Memorial Centre in Mumbai, will examine and harmonise those plans. Dulloo said working with one of the country’s leading cancer institutions would help the territory adopt national best practices.
A registry first
Akriti Sagar, Mission Director of the National Health Mission, told the meeting that a Steering Committee-cum-State Cancer Registry Coordination Unit now exists. Its job is to build population-based and hospital-based cancer registries across the territory under the National Cancer Registry Programme.
Since cancer was notified as a reportable disease in Jammu and Kashmir, she said, the government has begun the process of signing an agreement with the ICMR-National Institute of Non-Communicable Disease Epidemiology in Bengaluru for technical help with the registry.
The meeting also took stock of existing cancer facilities: the State Cancer Institute at Government Medical College Jammu, SKIMS Soura, Government Medical College Srinagar, AIIMS Vijaypur, the newer medical colleges and the district day-care chemotherapy centres.
On the awareness side, the strategy calls for campaigns through print, electronic and digital media, schools, Panchayati Raj Institutions and Anganwadi Centres, covering risk factors, warning signs and screening.
