The health ministry will soon launch a national programme to diagnose cancer at an early stage among the population and provide free chemotherapy, The Times of India reported on Monday.

The programme in its first phase will open in 100 districts in 21 states where each district hospital will be given Rs 1 crore to provide free chemotherapy to 100 patients per district. The hospitals will be equipped to diagnose and treat patients with chemotherapy and provide day care chemotherapy. Each facility will have four beds, one medical oncologist and two nurses.

The Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) clinics will be set up in the district hospitals shortlisted and the population aged 30 years and above will be screened under the programme. Women in the age group of 30 to 69 will be screened for cervical and breast cancer. But radiotherapy, as of now, will be constricted to the 27 existing regional cancer centres.

e ministry’s budget per district for cancer control is around Rs 6 crore which will include creating manpower, buying equipment, and setting up required infrastructure. The money will be released to 30 districts by March 2011.

Health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad told the newspaper that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that India will soon be the next hub for cancer. Rs 750 crore has been set aside just for the cancer programme.

Around 7,000 CHCs are being selected which will have an NCD clinic each and the 38 new cancer centres will be linked to district hospitals. Auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs) are being trained to identify warning signs of cancer while doctors in PHCs and CHCs are being trained to diagnose cancer cases early, Azad said.

Cancer, a non-communicable disease, is the third biggest killer in the country. The burden of mortality from different types of cancers is high in India as four lakh patients die of the disease every year. At any given point there are over 25 lakh cancer patients in the country and over 10 lakh new cancer cases are detected annually. By 2015, the number of new cases in India is expected to cross 15 lakh.

Most cancer cases are diagnosed at an advanced stage, leading to high mortality. In some patients where the disease is diagnosed early, the cost factor is a major constraint as the chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery for the disease are expensive procedures.