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The HinduJuly 5, 2026

Counting cancer: On making cancer a notifiable disease in India

What’s good for the goose is surely good for the geese. What the States will benefit from, the country could too. In India, cancer is not a notifiable disease at the national level, keeping with the Health Ministry’s position that such notification is only for communicable diseases. Population-based cancer registries and hospital-based cancer registries are currently the only national tool at the disposal of the Centre to count cancer cases. Unfortunately, these registries cover about 10%-16 % of the population, and have an urban, government health care set-up skew. However, several States have taken the lead on this front, making cancer a notifiable disease within their boundaries. Telangana is the latest to join the list of States that have made cancer a notifiable disease , bringing the total number of States doing so to 17. With the Global Cancer Observatory (affiliated to the World Health Organization) projecting an estimated increase of 1.05 million cases between 2022 (1.41 million) and 2045 (2.46 million), the rise is expected to be a staggering over 74%. Given these projections, thanks to an increasing life span and ageing demographics, changes in lifestyle and diet, it becomes all the more important to be armed with data and get ready for vanguard action from a public health point of view. While State action can, to an extent, solve the data question, any benefit thus derived from notifying health authorities of every single case of cancer, it cannot become a rubric by which the nation can contour its cancer control programme. Apart from existing registries covering mostly urban and semi-urban posts, care in India is also delivered in good measure through the private sector and that data set is not uniformly captured. The Indian government must pay heed to its own counsel — the Indian Council of Medical Research, National Centre for Disease Informatics and Research (now ICMR-NINE) had recommended that cancer be made a notifiable disease years ago. It is a fact that establishing cancer as a notifiable disease will mean a sudden increase in the number of cases being recorded, but it must not be considered a liability. Instead, it is merely part of the process of crafting a studied, and evidence-based response — health care and information, education, and communication (IEC) — to cancer at the country level. While bold advances in research and treatment methodologies have retrieved cancer from the fear and the utter helplessness surrounding it, the heart of the issue remains the lack of data. Taking lessons from the States, the Centre must recalibrate and make cancer a notifiable disease in India. Published - July 04, 2026 12:10 am IST Read Comments Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit READ LATER SEE ALL Remove Related Topics cancer / India / health / hospital and clinic / population / government / World Health Organization / demography / lifestyle diseases / diet (health) / disease / Telangana

Key GK Takeaways for CLAT
  • 1On governance, public health falls under the State List (Entry 6) of the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution, which explains why States like Telangana can independently mandate cancer notification while the Centre lags. This division of legislative power is why India often sees a patchwork of 17 States acting ahead of a national policy. Cooperative federalism, as encouraged under Article 256, could help harmonise such State initiatives into a uniform national framework.
  • 2On the policy and welfare front, India's National Programme for Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases already covers cancer screening infrastructure, but weak notification undermines its targeting. Comparable countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States have mandatory cancer registries under national law, enabling far more granular epidemiological planning. This gap illustrates why domestic institutional design, not just funding, determines health outcomes.
  • 3Legally, notifiable disease regimes in India are rooted in the colonial-era Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, and State Public Health Acts, both drafted with communicable diseases in mind. Extending notifiability to a non-communicable disease like cancer would require either amending State health Acts or a fresh Union framework, potentially invoking the Directive Principle under Article 47 on raising public health standards. The Indian Council of Medical Research, a statutory advisory body, has already recommended this shift.
  • 4The numbers are stark: the Global Cancer Observatory projects Indian cancer cases will rise from 1.41 million in 2022 to 2.46 million by 2045, a jump of over 74 percent, while existing registries capture only 10 to 16 percent of the population. Seventeen States have already acted independently, but private-sector care, which treats a substantial share of patients, remains largely outside any registry. This data deficit directly limits the precision of resource allocation for cancer control programmes.

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