SPECIAL TRAINING PROGRAMME TO TRACK PROSTATE CANCER PATIENTS

Chandigarh, October 13, 2017: The Punjab Government has organized special training programme to track prostate cancer patients in the State. This population based screening programme of Non Communicable Diseases is to be carried out for early diagnosing of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke.

Disclosing this here today, the Health and Family Welfare Minister Mr. 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 common cancer screening programme, as many as 81 Medical officers, 3652 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 would preferably be conducted at district level in separate batches of all the categories.

The Health Minister said that apart from this, 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 standardize treatment services to the males, females and children suffering from the cancer in the empanelled hospitals.

Mr. Mohindra said that under common cancer screening from 1st April, 2017 till date, 31059 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 44436 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 32430 female and 19932 males were screened under mouth cancer, out of which 226 females and 285 males were detected with suspected cancer and 194 females and 272 females were referred for further investigation.

He said that under this common cancer screening programme, 121 patients confirmed suffering from cancer have been referred to the Tertiary Care at empanelled hospitals of the State so far.