Oncologist Perspectives on Breast Cancer Screening in India - Qualitative Study Results from Andhra Pradesh

The urban cancer registries at 5 metropolitan cities located at Bangalore, Bhopal, Chennai and Mumbai in India are important sources of data regarding breast cancer in India (Kamarana et al., 2003). The data from these registries tend to focus greatly on the cancers near surrounding urban areas and have very limited inclusion of rural geographic areas (Babu, 2009). The pooled data on the number of Breast cancer cases among females in (Takiar and Vijay, 2010) inidcates that the absoulte numbers of breast cancers grew by 38% from 1998-2005. However, the available evidence does not provide useful interpretations for identifying local prevalence of breast cancer and plan public health actions accordingly. It is not possible to answer one putative question: whether breast cancer is highly prevalent or not in rural areas of Andhra Pradesh or other such states in India, as we just do not have sufficient information to tackle this question. In order to understand the epidemiological correlates, we followed two prong approach. One, we conducted a systematic review of evidence available on epidemiologic