The registry is now expected to be completed and uploaded before April 2027 – a year after the state declared cancer a notifiable disease. Hyderabad: The rollout of a cancer registry in Telangana is facing delays, as officials are taking time to verify, filter and consolidate data received from hospitals and other healthcare facilities across the state.
With the govt declaring cancer notifiable, authorities launched a dedicated portal on April 6 this year to enable govt and private hospitals, nursing homes and diagnostic centres to report cancer cases to the health department. The cancer portal data shows an incidence rate of 125 cases for a population of one lakh, compared with 110 per lakh nationwide and 253 per lakh globally. The portal also shows that as many as 10.33 lakh people (3.54 lakh men and 6.79 lakh) women have received treatment. Thirty-one daycare cancer centres are already operational across districts, each with 10 chemotherapy and 10 palliative-care beds. More than 1,500 patients have received chemotherapy at these centres.
Because the data has to be verified and duplicates removed, but the department should at least release an interim report and explain the reasons for the delay, a complete registry may take longer. A notifiable disease is any medical condition that is required by law to be reported to govt authorities. “The cases reported from April onwards should ideally have been available for preliminary analysis by now. Incidence rate is the number of new cancer cases reported in a specific population during a given period, usually expressed as cases per one lakh people per year.
District medical and health officers have been asked to train the staff but it will still take some months,” said a senior doctor from the MNJ Institute of Oncology and Regional Cancer Centre, Lakdikapul. Health department staff should have been imparted training on data entry much earlier,” said a govt oncologist and public health expert. Some facilities also need training on the data entry process, which is another reason for the delay. Officials are also checking for duplicate entries and linking the records of patients who receive treatment at different hospitals.
“Cases are being registered on the portal, but the data has to be filtered and verified before the cancer trends are finalised.
The annual number of new cancer cases is around 55,000 to 60,000 annually, according to health department estimates.
This is important to ensure that cancer figures are accurate and that patients’ treatment history is tracked across hospitals without duplication,” said a health official. The system must ensure that the same patient is not counted more than once.
“If a patient from Karimnagar comes to Hyderabad for treatment, the patient’s earlier records and history should be available.