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Although the incidence is on rise, it is a treatable cancer provided it is detected early and treated appropriately. Unfortunately, in India, women mostly reach out to the doctors when the disease is already in an advanced stage. One of the reasons for the late presentation is the lack of an affordable mammogram facility.

“Recent medical statistics indicate that in India breast cancer accounts for around 2 lakh new cases annually with close to 1 lakh deaths. Breast cancer has now emerged as one of the most common cancers in women, overtaking the number of cervical cancer cases which was earlier the most common cancer,” said Dr Raj Nagarkar in an interview.

Post cancer survival rate for women in India was registered at 60 per cent while in the US it was 80 per cent.

In diagnosis of breast cancer, identifying and detecting breast cancer at an early stage and getting a good facility for treatment are very significant factors. Early stage breast cancers are easier to treat successfully as they are small and are least spread.

India suffers from the lack of these critical imaging technologies, with only 30 percent of cancer centres having advanced imaging technology. According to a NITI Ayog report published in 2021, in the area of medical diagnostics only 2700 mammograms are installed in India, which is less than 5 per cent of the mammograms installed in the US. Similarly, India has only 120 PET-CT scanners, with the majority of them concentrated in metropolitan cities.

Among all the imaging technologies, mammograms are considered one of the best ways to screen an early stage breast cancer in women, with breast cancer cases rising year on year in India, the shortage of Mammograms and other advanced imaging technologies may hurt the efforts to diagnose and detect breast cancers in Indian women.

One also needs to ensure that they are equipped with a mammogram machine and not a sonography machine, which makes the accuracy of the diagnosis low resulting in missing a lot of potential breast cancer cases.