National Institutes of Health, Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination

Government of Pakistan

Cancer is major public health problem for Pakistan where annually about 148,000 new cancer cases are diagnosed and almost 100,000 die due to cancer. The most common cancers in Pakistan are oral, lung, liver, breast, cervical and blood/bone-marrow cancer.

The major risk factors for cancer include smoking, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, infections (hepatitis B/C, Human Papilloma virus) and exposure to toxins. All these can be prevented by adopting health life style and appropriate vaccinations. Therefore there is a need to educate the people especially the younger age group about risk factors of cancer and their preventive measures.

HRI is planning to create awareness among public about 6 common cancers (oral, lung, liver, breast, cervical and blood/bone-marrow) by celebrating the cancer days as well as the World Cancer Day (schedule attached).

For this purpose, awareness activities like walks, distribution of awareness material will be done throughout the country. The information brochure about the risk factors and prevention of 06 common cancers has been developed in English and Urdu for easy understanding of common cancers of Pakistan.

 In order to prevent and control Cancers, there is need to establish the Cancer Registry. To date we do not have any National Cancer Registry which can provide the true nature of problem to formulate health policy. Ministry of NHSRC has designated HRI ( Health Research Institute) to establish a cancer registry by affiliating all major public and private sector hospitals of the country.

 To date 08 hospitals (Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center, Karachi, Civil Hospital, Karachi, National Institute of Child Health, Karachi, Nishtar Hospital, Multan, Allied Hospital Faisalabad, Bolan Hospital, Quetta, Khyber Teaching Hospital, Peshawar and Armed Force Institute of Pathology, Rawalpindi) are sending their data on quarterly basis to HRI since May 2015.

The preliminary findings of the data are shown given below.