After checking over one lakh people under cancer screening programme, the Punjab government’s Health Department has found 121 positive cases of cancer in the past six months.

In a statement issued on Friday the state Health Department disclosed that these patients have been referred to the tertiary care at empanelled hospitals of the state so far.

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Health and Family Welfare minister Brahm Mohindra said that in order to carry out the screening appropriately and effectively, training will be imparted to medical officers, staff nurses, Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) and Accredited Social Health Workers (ASHA).

He said that in earlier batches under the common cancer screening programme, as many as 81 Medical officers, 3,652 ANMs and 155 nursing sisters have been trained for this ambitious programme.

He said that special training for population based screening of Non Communicable Diseases (NCD) would preferably be conducted at the district level in separate batches of all the categories.

Mohindra said that under common cancer screening from 1 April, 2017, till date, 31,059 females were screened under cervix cancer category and out of these,  suspected cancer was detected in 549 cases, out of which 487 persons were referred for further investigation.

He said that 44,436 persons were screened under breast cancer category, out of which 572 were suspected cases and 527 were referred for the further investigation. He also said that 32,430 female and 19,932 males were screened under mouth cancer, out of which 226 females and 285 males were detected with suspected cancer and 194 females and 272 males were referred for further investigation.

He said that the state government has organised a special training programme to track prostate cancer patients. This population based screening programme of NCD is to be carried out for early diagnosing of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular diseases and stroke.

The Health minister said that apart from this, the common cancer screening programme has already initiated, especially to identify patients suffering from cancer for early treatment.

He said that as per the experts, cancer is curable if it diagnosed in the first stage and only positive approach towards the life can provide the strength to counter this disease.

He reiterated that state government is committed to provide standardise treatment services to the males, females and children suffering from the cancer in the empanelled hospitals.