The government is planning to make cancer a “notifiable disease”, which will mean every case will have to be reported. Till now infectious diseases like polio, plague, H1N1, H5N1 (bird flu) figure in the list of notifiable diseases. Recently, tuberculosis was made a notifiable disease. Cancer would become the first non-communicable disease to be included in the same category.

Officials in the Union health ministry disclosed that government is seriously considering to make cancer a notifiable disease and the decision in this regard will be taken very soon.