Tata Memorial Hospital will bring cancer screening to your doorstep

MUMBAI: Tata Memorial Hospital, the country's premier cancer-care hospital in Parel, will launch its first mobile outreach programme on November 1 to screen the city's population for the three most common cancers, namely breast, cervical and oral.
The mobile unit - comprising a bus equipped with basic equipment such as a colposcopy to check for cervical cancer, a cubicle to clinically test for breast cancer and some equipment to conduct pathology tests - will be flagged off on Sunday by Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad.
"The bus, which was donated by the Women's Cancer Initiative, will first be stationed near Anushakti Nagar,'' said Dr Sudeep Gupta, who is attached to the hospital's medical oncology department.
According to a press release by the Women's Cancer Initiative, the mobile unit will help in early detection and treatment of the disease. "Cervix and breast and oral cancers account for over 58% of the cancer cases among women in India. We find over 70% of the cases reporting at advanced stages due to high costs and poor access to screening services,'' it said.
The mobile unit will mainly target women from the low-socio economic strata.
Tata Memorial Hospital not only screens roughly 8,000 people every year who walk into its Parel campus, it covers roughly 40,000 through its urban screening programmes and another 25,000 through its rural programmes. "The need for a mobile unit was felt so that we could go to localities instead of expecting people coming on their own accord for a screening,'' said Dr Gupta.