PANAJI
The State government is hoping to soon put in place a cancer registry through the Directorate of Health Services (DHS) to enable research which will help shape strategies to tackle the life-threatening disease.
The Goa Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), which has a tie-up with the famed Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre Mumbai, to guide its nascent Oncology department, maintains such a register but the government has no clue of the quantum of cancer patients being diagnosed and treated in private facilities.
"Therefore we want to set up this registry with the non-communicable disease cell of the DHS as the nodal agency where data of patients from private healthcare facilities is collated," a senior health official said.
Until now, only data of patients diagnosed with cancer and undergoing treatment at government facilities are available with the DHS.
Once protocols are put in place, information of patients receiving treatment in hospitals other than GMC will be obtained and a registry maintained by the DHS, the official added.
The registry will collate data related to the number of patients being diagnosed, the type of cancers, gender of patients, their ages and also the treatment protocols followed.
This data will help researchers get a better sense of crucial factors like in which areas of the State the numbers are rising, what treatment is showing success for each type of cancers and whether there are extraneous factors for the rise of incidence in the local population, the official added.
The increasing trend of cancer in Goa came to light after GMCH launched its cancer screening campaigns conducted through mobile cancer detection vans.
Meanwhile, records maintained by DHS from government healthcare facilities over five years since 2019 indicate that more than one person is being diagnosed with one or the other type of cancer daily.
Cases of cervical, colon, oral, breast and a few other types of cancers in government facilities over the last five years was the highest in 2022 at 499 and lowest at 247 cases in 2021, when public healthcare facilities and resources were overstretched dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Possibly, since our facilities were overstretched due to the pandemic, people may have preferred to avail private oncology services which may explain the lower number of cancer cases in 2021," a senior health official said, adding that cancer numbers have consistently remained under the 500 mark.
In 2019, 462 cancer cases were reported from government facilities in the State and the number drastically dropped to 322 the following year (in 2020) when the Covid-19 pandemic first hit the State in March.
