Improving breast cancer healthcare in India: bold policy initiatives in women's healthcare are needed to overhaul the system

Pre COVID-19, breast cancer rates in India were heading towards epidemic proportions. Whilst the survival rate for women with breast cancer in the UK is approximately 85%, in India it’s barely 50%, with the highest female mortality rate found in those aged 25-50 years of age.

The two reasons for this situation are firstly that there has been no large-scale implementation of a breast cancer prevention awareness campaign (since a national cancer control programme in 1976) to promote awareness of the early warning signs. A slight change in focus was seen in the National Health Policy (2017) when the percentage of GDP by 2020 for healthcare rose to 2.5%: a rise of 1.5%, but without a strategic focus on cancer.