Financing and Policy

Chairs

Vasudeva Bhat K

Professor and Head

Division of Pediatric Hematology and oncology, Deputy Coordinator, Manipal Comprehensive Cancer care centre, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal

Shalini Jatia

Officer-In-Charge (OIC)

ImpaCCT Foundation Pediatric Oncology Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai

Goal Statement

To achieve quality & timely care through structured/ strategic plans & adequate resources.

Overview

The Financing and Policy taskforce focuses on strengthening financial mechanisms, policy frameworks, and national planning for childhood cancer care in India. The goal is to ensure sustainable and equitable access to diagnosis, treatment, and support services for every child affected by cancer.

Key Focus Areas

Create a comprehensive resource document for all the funding - Govt, NGO, CSR, Crowd Funding and increase visibility.
Make a list of NGOs for all hospitals and the support they provide.
Country Collaboration for Childhood Cancer Control (C5) Tool consists of 5 modules and provides a platform for sustainably improving childhood cancer outcomes in low- and middle- income countries. We plan to do two modules of C5 tool, c1 – National Context and Indicators and c2 – Mapped Institutions, Organizations & Roles in the next six months.
Undertake a costing exercise to determine cost of cancer treatment.

Glimpses of work

Status

Government schemes applicable across 30 States and Union Territories have been identified and collated.
Data on NGOs working in 31 states on childhood cancer initiatives has also been compiled.

These findings will support the development of a comprehensive landscape analysis, highlighting gaps, overlaps, and opportunities for synergy between government and non-government stakeholders.

Context

To determine the cost of cancer treatment in India, a study is being conducted using the CC Bridge Tool — a rapid budgeting tool designed for childhood cancers. Developed by a team of researchers from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, led by Nancy Bolous and Nickhill Bhakta. The tool provides a quick, holistic, and equity-focused method for estimating cost-effectiveness and supporting government planning.

Purpose

Every country budgets for health expenditure, focusing largely on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases.
However, few nations specifically budget for childhood cancer. Governments often do not include pediatric oncology cost estimations in their national budgets.
This exercise aims to fill that gap by providing India-specific data to inform evidence-based budgeting and national cancer control plans, which are typically updated every five years.

Status

A list of 50 hospitals and medical centers providing pediatric cancer services has been prepared. From this, 30 centers will be recruited to participate in the study.
Two training sessions for participating centers were conducted in February and July 2025.
Data collection is currently underway and will be analyzed by the end of 2025.

July training session

February training session

The initiative aims to implement the C5 Tool — designed to improve collaborative efforts, strengthen health systems, and facilitate national strategic planning for the care and cure of children with cancer. In the current phase, the focus is on the c2 Module of the tool, which supports:

Mapping of institutions and service delivery networks.
Assessing manpower and infrastructure to identify system-level gaps.

Status / Next Steps

In the state of Odisha, seven hospitals and 19 civil society organizations have been successfully mapped.

State

Sector

Cancer Service