The rationale for cancer to be made a notifiable disease in India.

Cancer cases are rising in India. However, despite attempts to make cancer a notifiable disease, the Ministry of Health in India has resisted this. Their reasoning is that cancer is not a communicable disease and does not have community spread. We highlight flaws in the logic of this argument and highlight how a legal mandate to report cases would give impetus to the decades-old National Cancer Registry Program. Robust record keeping would allow real-time epidemiological analysis and highlight those areas where priority could be given to both prevent and treat cancer.