SRINAGAR: Chief Secretary Atal Dulloo on Monday chaired a high-level meeting to review the initial formulation of a comprehensive Cancer Care Strategy for Jammu and Kashmir, directing the Health and Medical Education (H&ME) Department to ensure time-bound implementation of every proposed intervention through institutional coordination, regular monitoring and measurable outcomes, a review that comes as fresh data confirms cancer cases in the Union Territory have been climbing steadily, year after year.
The meeting was attended by the Director of SKIMS, the Mission Director of the National Health Mission (NHM), the Director of Tata Memorial Centre (TMC) Chandigarh, principals of the Government Medical Colleges, divisional Directors of Health Services, GMC faculty and senior department officers. The strategy itself was prepared by the H&ME Department in consultation with oncology experts and national institutions, and envisages a holistic framework spanning prevention, early detection, screening, diagnosis, treatment, palliative care, research, capacity building and digital health.
Reviewing the roadmap, Dulloo observed that cancer is emerging as a major public health challenge in the UT and called for a coordinated, evidence-based, patient-centric response. He underscored the need to establish a robust preventive oncology framework across all Government Medical Colleges to enable early detection, while simultaneously building human resource capacity and infrastructure so that diagnostic and treatment facilities sit closer to patients, reducing the need to travel to distant centres.
He directed a phased capacity-building programme to train specialist manpower, including Radiation Safety Officer (RSO), certified personnel, alongside upgrades to medical equipment and infrastructure at all medical colleges. The strategy, he instructed, should roll out in a well-defined, phase-wise manner over the coming years to ensure equitable distribution of oncology facilities, with each expert committee constituted under it preparing detailed, time-bound implementation plans, to be examined and harmonised by an Apex Committee chaired by Dr Sudeep Gupta, Director of Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai. Dulloo described the TMC partnership as one that would bring technical guidance, national best practices and faster execution on the ground.
The directive lands against a backdrop of hard data. Response to an RTI application has put a number to the burden in Jammu division alone – 22,130 cancer cases recorded at GMC Jammu between 2015 and 2025, with lung cancer the single most common malignancy in the region. In Kashmir, hospital-based figures show an unbroken upward curve: 6,649 cases in 2018, dipping to 6,374 in 2019 and 6,113 in 2020, before rising sharply – 7,090 in 2021, 7,846 in 2022, 8,124 in 2023, and 8,355 in 2024.
NHM Mission Director Akriti Sagar told the meeting that a Steering Committee-cum-State Cancer Registry Coordination Unit has already been constituted to build a Population-Based and Hospital-Based Cancer Registry network across the UT, enabling systematic collection of incidence data and evidence-based planning under the National Cancer Registry Programme.
Following the May 21 notification declaring cancer a notifiable disease, she said, the government has begun executing an MoU with the ICMR–National Institute of Non-Communicable Disease Epidemiology (ICMR-NIE), Bengaluru, for technical support in setting up a modern registry system, a three-year collaboration carrying a budgetary outlay of roughly Rs 93 lakh, currently awaiting Finance Department concurrence. The committee has written to all Chief Medical Officers to identify reporting institutions and has initiated a hub-and-spoke model linking district hospitals and CHCs with the GMCs.
Where Infrastructure Falls Short
The meeting took stock of existing oncology infrastructure: the State Cancer Institute at GMC Jammu, SKIMS Soura, GMC Srinagar, AIIMS Vijaypur, the newer medical colleges, and district-level Day Care Chemotherapy Centres under NHM. Even so, the governments own assessment shows how thin specialised capacity remains outside the two flagship institutes in Jammu and Srinagar.
Molecular oncology labs exist only at SKIMS, GMC Jammu and an outsourced facility at AIIMS Vijaypur; proposals are now with ICMR under its DiaMONDs Project to extend these to GMC Doda, GMC Kathua, GMC Srinagar and GMC Anantnag. Imaging shows a similar concentration. Mammography, for instance, is available only at SKIMS, though the Centre has allocated four mammography units, nine MRIs and 275 X-ray machines to the UT that now need to be distributed. The strategy also proposes phased expansion of PET-CT scanners, gamma cameras and endoscopy services.
Radiotherapy remains limited to four centres in Jammu division and two in Kashmir division (GMC Srinagar and SKIMS), each new facility costing an estimated Rs 20 crore. Surgical oncology faces what internal documents call an “extreme shortage” of trained specialists, no dedicated posts yet exist in the newer medical colleges, while bone marrow and stem cell transplant services face a comparable manpower crunch, concentrated almost entirely at SKIMS. Dulloo reviewed proposals to expand all three: radiotherapy infrastructure, surgical oncology services, and multidisciplinary oncology teams at major tertiary institutions.
Palliative care has a five-year head start on the rest of the strategy: the first dedicated centre opened at Gandhi Nagar Hospital, Jammu, in March 2019, and 10-bedded wards were inaugurated across all district hospitals in 2021. A phase-wise roadmap now aims to have master trainers in every district within a month, cascading to block level within four months, and integrated into the National Programme for Palliative Care within a year. A separate committee is examining Kerala’s neighbourhood-network model, with backing from Pallium India and Tata Memorial Centre, Chandigarh.
On prevention, a Task Force under the Ayushman Aarogya Mandirs has already trained 210 Trainers of Trainers, with further cascading planned through September. The meeting reviewed extensive IEC campaigns planned across print, electronic and digital media, schools and Anganwadi centers, with messaging tailored by audience, including HPV vaccination drives for school-going girls (which began nationally on February 28, 2026) and harm-reduction messaging around Noon Chai, the salt tea long linked to elevated cancer risk in the Kashmiri diet, aimed particularly at women aged 30–65 and at mothers and caregivers.
As outlined, the Cancer Care Strategy seeks an integrated continuum, prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, palliative care and research, with the objective of reducing the cancer burden and improving survival outcomes across the UT. The detailed implementation plan runs month by month through December 2026, covering nodal officer nominations, institution onboarding onto the ICMR-NIE registry portal, a UT Cancer Registry Dashboard integrated with the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, and full digital data entry on the NP-NCD portal.
