Karkinos Healthcare achieves milestone in cervical cancer screening
Karkinos Healthcare, a wholly-owned step-down subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, has completed HPV DNA screening for more than 100,000 women across India. This milestone marks a significant step in expanding access to cervical cancer screening and follow-up care, according to a company release.
The initiative combines World Health Organisation-recommended HPV DNA testing with a digitally enabled care continuum that includes awareness, tracking, triage, navigation, and follow-up care. This model aims to address both limited access to screening and the common problem of patients being lost to follow-up after a positive test result.
Integrated care pathways reduce loss to follow-up
Dr Neerja Bhatla, Consultant for Early Detection and Women Wellness at Karkinos Healthcare, stated, "The evidence has been clear for some time that HPV DNA testing is the most reliable primary screen we have for cervical cancer. What matters now is not testing at scale alone but also ensuring that every woman who tests positive is carried through to diagnosis and treatment across the care continuum. A program that can demonstrate that linkage at this volume, and well beyond the big cities, is exactly the direction India's cervical cancer elimination effort needs."
The programme has been implemented across multiple geographies through public health programmes, public-private partnerships, CSR-supported initiatives, nurse-assisted and self-sampling models, district-level screening efforts, and focused outreach for underserved and high-risk communities. A large proportion of the women screened came from areas with limited access to healthcare and cancer screening services.
Technology-driven care pathways enable scale
Dr Goura Kishore Rath, Senior Oncology Advisor at Karkinos Healthcare, commented, "For decades, the obstacle in this country has not been our understanding of cervical cancer; it has been the reach. Bringing a high-quality test to women in districts and small towns and then carrying them through the system rather than leaving them with only a result, is how a public-health gain is actually made. This is the model that has to scale."
The release emphasised that the initiative demonstrates the feasibility of delivering high-quality HPV DNA testing at scale in India through technology-driven care pathways.
Dedication to equitable and sustainable care
Sripriya Rao, Chief Growth Officer - Women Wellness and Head of Distributed Cancer Care Network (DCCN) at Karkinos Healthcare, said, "Every one of these one lakh tests represents a woman who was met where she was. The measure of this work is not how many women we reached, but how many we did not lose along the way, and whether we did it with dignity, and sustainably, for women who have historically been the last to be served. That is the standard we hold ourselves to."
Rao added, "At Karkinos, we dedicate this milestone to the late Dr R. Sankaranarayanan, fondly known to us as 'Shankar Sir', whose scientific leadership and unwavering conviction in early detection laid the foundation for this work. Shankar Sir believed that no woman should die of a cancer we already know how to prevent. Backed by the belief, conviction, and unflinching support of Reliance, we are confident of carrying this journey forward to one million tests next, and to one hundred million responsibly, sustainably, and without ever letting a single woman fall through the pathway. We also acknowledge the continued guidance of Dr Partha Basu of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in the science of cancer prevention."
Contribution to India's cervical cancer elimination goals
The release noted that the infrastructure and learnings from the programme can support wider adoption of organised cervical cancer screening and contribute to India's efforts to eliminate cervical cancer. Karkinos Healthcare highlighted that cervical cancer remains one of the most preventable cancers, and timely screening, early detection, and appropriate follow-up care can prevent most cervical cancer-related deaths. Expanding access to high-quality screening is one of the biggest opportunities to improve women's health outcomes across the country.
