Between 30-50% of all cancer cases are preventable. Prevention offers the most cost-effective strategy for the control of cancer and the focus of this thematic area would be prevention of India centric cancers. In our country the most common cancer sites are lung, oral cavity and stomach in men and breast, cervix and colon in women. An early detection network can help in the detection of cancer in early stages and help in reducing morbidity and mortality related to cancer. Vaccination programs for infection related causes of cancer like HPV and Hepatitis will be strengthened. Communication research and secondary data analysis are cost effective strategies to enable identification of existing knowledge gaps and will be taken on priority. Scaling up of prior studies that have already shown promising results will be undertaken.
