Cancer patients could rise to 2 million by 2040: Govt

India is third after China and the United States in the prevalence of cancer across the world, and the country is likely to have around 2 million cases by 2040, Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Jitendra Singh informed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

Responding to supplementaries during the Question Hour, the minister informed the house that the Department of Biotechnology has developed the first-ever HPV vaccine for the treatment of cervical cancer in women, and the Government is working to make it available to a larger population at an affordable rate or free of cost. “It is true that cancer incidence has increased all over the world. If you take the world statistics, we have 20 million cancer patients every year, that is around 2 crore cancer patients every year. In India alone, we have about 1.4 to 1.5 million, which is almost 15 lakhs.

“The figure is expected to go up to almost 2 million by 2040 or so, which means nearly 20 lakhs. We stand at number 3, after China and the USA, as far as the prevalence of cancer is concerned,” Singh told the Rajya Sabha.

He said this could have been possible due to a number of reasons — the changing spectrum of disease in this country.

Till the 1980s, he said India was beset with communicable diseases, then the era came of non-communicable diseases. As of today, we are beset with both, he noted.

“The irony is that many of these diseases, including cancer, which were earlier happening in the later decades of life, are now happening in the earlier decades. Cancer of a later age can now happen at an earlier age. The same is with heart attacks, which were earlier happening late in life, are now happening at a younger age,” he said.

Though we take pride in the fact that India comprises 70 per cent of the population below the age of 40, the other half of the truth is that the number of citizens aged 60 and above has also gone up, the minister said, adding that this also adds to the disease burden.

As far as the treatment is concerned, the Government has started an ambitious programme to provide cancer facilities in virtually every district hospital of the country, Singh said, adding that this is a heterogeneous country, and the nature of cancer also varies. For example, in the north-east, you have head and neck cancers, he noted.