A web portal for streamlining cancer clinical screening in selected population at risk of or suspected to be having cancer, was released by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan here on Tuesday.
The cancer screening portal, which will aid community-level early detection of cancers as envisaged in the Kerala Cancer Control Programme, has been designed by the e-health wing of the Health department.
The cancer screening portal has been designed as a follow up to the population-level screening programme for the detection of lifestyle diseases, an initiative of the Health department, under which all persons above 30 years are being subjected to preliminary screening for lifestyle diseases. The screening is being done by trained ASHA workers during home visits, using the Shylee app .
The ongoing programme has so far done the preliminary screening of over 37 lakh persons over 30 years of age, of whom, 2.40 lakh are required to be subjected for clinical screening for cancers, based on their risk profile.
The Health department has arranged for clinical screening (examination by a physician/surgeon) of these at-risk persons at family health centres and community health centres. On fixed days in a week, persons suspected to be at risk of breast cancer will undergo clinical examination of the breast; those suspected to be having pre-cancerous lesions in the mouth will undergo clinical oral examination, while those at risk of cervical cancer will undergo the Pap Smear examination
After clinical examination, those who require biopsy or FNAC (fine needle aspiration cytology), will be referred to the taluk hospitals, where sample collection will be facilitated. The collected samples will be sent to district labs for diagnosis and the results made available through the LabSys portal
Those who are given the definitive diagnosis of cancer will be offered treatment in any of the hospitals which are part of the Kerala Cancer Care Grid, which is the network of cancer treating hospitals in the State
The new screening portal will help streamline all these activities so that every case of suspected cancer detected in the community will go through the process of definitive lab diagnosis and proper treatment and not go missing for follow-up, as has been happening.
Health Minister Veena George, Principal Secretary (Health) Tinku Biswal, Project Director of e-health, Mohammed Y. Safirulla and the State Mission Director of National Health Mission S. Karthikeyan were present at the launch of the portal.
