Posts Department Issues Breast Cancer Awareness Stamps

The Department of Posts, under the Ministry of Communications, released a special souvenir sheet carrying two commemorative postage stamps on breast cancer awareness, along with a set of picture postcards, at Dak Bhawan in New Delhi. The release was timed for International Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Who released them

Director General Postal Services Manisha Sinha released the stamps in the presence of Punya Salila Srivastava, Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The health ministry supplied the technical inputs, reference material and background used to build the health content of the stamps and the postcards. Manisha Sinha said commemorative stamps carry a country's priorities past geographical boundaries, pressed the case for regular screening and early detection, and described postcards as a way of sending encouragement to women under treatment.

The screening numbers

The Health Secretary said women's health is the foundation of healthy families and a healthy nation, and pointed to the Swasth Nari, Sashakt Parivar Abhiyaan, run from 17 September to 2 October last year. Under the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases (NP-NCD), screening for oral, breast and cervical cancers has been folded into primary health care at more than 1.8 lakh Ayushman Arogya Mandirs.

Of those under treatment, 2.70 lakh are oral cancer patients, 1.43 lakh breast cancer patients and 1.37 lakh cervical cancer patients. The NP-NCD portal and ABHA IDs under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission keep records reachable across facilities.

The disease burden

India reported more than two lakh new breast cancer cases in 2024, and roughly one woman in every 29 is at risk of the disease. Additional Director General Dr. Pushp Lata said breast cancer is the commonest cancer among Indian women and accounts for more than 30 per cent of all new cancers diagnosed in them. Close to a third of cases can be prevented and another third cured if caught early. Care runs from screening and referral at the primary level to confirmation and treatment at district hospitals, State Cancer Institutes and Tertiary Cancer Care Centres, with Daycare Cancer Centres set up to bring chemotherapy nearer home.