Over 16,000 cancer cases enrolled at SKIMS Soura in three years. Approximately 10,000 new cases in 2025. One diagnosis every half-hour. Nearly 50 per cent could be prevented if people are willing to face the truth they have been avoiding for so long.
Kamran Hamid Bhat
Chapter 1: The Corridor That Never Sleeps
Early in the morning, before the voice of the muezzin has died away from the towers of Soura, a line has already formed in the sandstone passage of the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS). One woman from Shopian holds a PET scan envelope in her hands like a talisman. There is a grandfather from Bandipora, whose grandson wheels his chair, each time taking a few strides, removing the old man’s pheran against the morning cold. A thirty-eight-year-old schoolteacher from Pulwama discovered a week ago that she had a lump.
They are all there for the same reason. They have come to hear a word that Kashmiris, over generations, have not liked to say aloud—a word so weighty that many still refer to it as woh bimari (that sickness).
Over the last three years, over sixteen thousand cancer cases have been enrolled at SKIMS Soura alone: 5,108 in 2023, increasing to 5,791 in 2024 and again in 2025—such a leap-frog of activity that the staff no longer speak of surges but of seasons. In the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, there were approximately 12,024 new cases in 2025, and 59,286 cases between 2021 and 2025—a consistent, unremitting rise since 2021, which saw 11,683 cases.
To put the cold arithmetic into the warm language of the household: every day, between thirty and forty Kashmiris are informed that they have cancer.
One diagnosis every half-hour. That is a child who returns to school and finds her mother not as talkative as usual. That is a shopkeeper putting up his shutters, thinking they will be closed for a week, only to find that it may become permanent.
Chapter 2: The Answer To The Question
So, is there truly an increased number of cancer cases in Kashmir? The information, now compiled from four different authoritative sources, speaks with a voice that no longer trembles.
Yes. Measurably, unambiguously, tragically, yes.
According to a report by Kashmir Observer, tabled figures in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly in February 2026, in a written reply to MLA Waheed-ur-Rehman Para, revealed that 32,425 cancer cases were reported across J&K in the past three years, with approximately 10,000 cases reported in 2025 alone.
Data provided by the Minister of State for Health, based on estimates from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), gives a longer curve: overall cancer incidence in J&K has increased by 11 per cent over a period of only five years, totalling 13,060 cases in 2021, with a projection of 14,493 by 2026. Mortality has kept pace, rising from 7,211 to 8,006 deaths between 2021 and 2025 in Kashmir. The total cancer burden between 2015 and 2024 has now risen above 1.45 lakh cases—an entire small district drained out, over time, into oncology wards.
Cancer cases in Kashmir alone have been recorded over 50,000 between 2018 and 2024. The expansion is not a blip on a dashboard. It is a direction—and the doctors who read it every morning have no conventional doubt about what it signifies.
The official point of view of the government, presented by Health and Medical Education Minister Sakina Itoo, is more reserved: the apparent increase is not necessarily an increase in incidence, and it can be largely explained by more effective diagnostic methods and higher detection rates. PET scans at SKIMS increased to 2,250 in 2025, more machines are being ordered, and CT and MRI have not only left Srinagar but also spread to all districts. But this is only part of the story—and the lesser part at that. Those who walk the wards claim that behind the enhanced lens is a truly magnified subject.
Chapter 3: A Land, A Diet, A Disease
To understand cancer in Kashmir, you must first understand Kashmir itself: how it takes fire in the belly, how it takes salt and smoke on the table, how it takes chemistry in the orchard, how it takes dust on the road as it has never taken dust on the road in a century.
The cancer profile of the valley is unique. Kashmir has long been a dreary spot on the global map, located within the “Asian Oesophageal Cancer Belt,” where oesophageal and gastric cancer rates are three to six times higher than in the southern Indian states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, or Maharashtra. Studies indicate that stomach cancer alone contributes approximately a quarter of all reported malignancies—25.2 per cent in one large study—second only to colorectal and lung cancer in men and breast and colorectal cancer in women.
Chapter 4: The Cruelty Of Late Arrival
Patients often present to hospitals at stage III or IV of cancer due to a lack of awareness, stigma, and the fact that specialised oncology facilities are often located far away.
A Kupwara mother with a breast lump must decide between the cost of a long shared-cab ride to Srinagar and the stigma a neighbour might whisper. A woodcutter in Gurez who coughs blood will resort to home remedies, then to prayer, then at last to a doctor. When he arrives, the lesion has frequently preceded him.
For those who make it to the hospital, the second diagnosis is the financial wound. Accounts published by a young Kashmiri who sat next to her mother’s bedside at SKIMS in 2024 embodied the failure of the PM-JAY “Golden Card” or the Sehat scheme, which proved useless when used by oncology patients in the valley—a cry echoed in several studies of hospital debts among Kashmir cancer families.
Is the increase in sea levels actually happening, or is it just something we can see?
Diagnostic reach in J&K has genuinely improved. Dr Qazi Ashraf himself concedes the point: “Earlier, ten or fifteen years ago, diagnostic tests like endoscopy, CT scan, ultrasound, mammography, and others were available only in Srinagar. They were not available outside Srinagar. Today, these tests are available in every district, so it becomes easy for people to get tested, and diseases are detected.” Mobile phones have made appointment-booking possible from remote valleys. Education has nudged people to take small symptoms seriously.
Dr Ashraf also speaks about the limitations of current data on cancer rates. “To truly understand if cancer is on the rise, a comprehensive population-based cancer registry is necessary. Unfortunately, Kashmir still lacks such a registry for its entire population. Although hospital-based registries have been operational since 2018, covering ten districts and diagnosing over 60,000 cases, this data is not enough to provide a complete picture.” A proper registry is essential to determine the actual incidence of cancer in the region. The current dataset, while extensive, is not a substitute for a thorough census of the population.
The warning signs that go beyond any bias in diagnosis are clear. We are seeing more young patients, and the tumours in orchard areas are becoming more aggressive. The death rate has increased by 11 per cent in just five years—a statistic that is not easily explained by “better detection” because it is based on the number of funerals, not scans. A study published in 2025 in the peer-reviewed journal Clinical Epidemiology and Global Health found a significant rise in stomach cancer cases across all districts of the Kashmir Valley, with the highest rates in South Kashmir. This pattern cannot be explained by simply having better diagnostic tools.
The impact is genuine. The fact that we can now see it more clearly is merely extra proof.
Chapter 5: What Prevention Could Still Win Back
There is a number that haunts the public health imagination of Kashmir, and it is not a frightening one. It is a hopeful one.
“Nearly 50 per cent of cancers could be prevented by reducing modifiable risk factors such as smoking, alcohol consumption, unhealthy diet, and sedentary lifestyle,” senior clinicians told Greater Kashmir in March 2026.
The prescriptions are not mysterious:
– Quit tobacco in every form—cigarette, hookah, snuff, the zarda tucked behind the lip.
– Restore vegetables to the plate and retire the daily red-meat wazwan to its ceremonial seat.
– Vaccinate adolescents against HPV and hepatitis B.
– Screen the breast, the cervix, the colon.
– Walk. Sleep. Weigh less.
– Spray the orchards responsibly—or not at all.
Doctors are also calling for systemic changes: a dedicated cancer registry, oncology specialists in district hospitals, better diagnostic tools (PET and MRI scans) available in every region, and assistance with travel and accommodation costs for rural patients. Most importantly, they want a strong awareness campaign to remove the stigma around cancer, making it easier for people to discuss it openly—even in their own homes and kitchens.
Cancer cannot be completely prevented, but we can make choices that lower our chances of getting it. It is all about making smart daily decisions to tip the scales in our favour.
Chapter 6: The Last Light On Zabarwan
As the sun sets behind the Zabarwan ridge, the hospital grows quiet. The crowd in the corridor has dwindled, and a cleaner is now mopping the floor where people stood for hours. In a private room on the fourth floor, a schoolteacher from Pulwama is having a tough conversation with her ten-year-old son. She is telling him that she will not be coming home tomorrow, as they had planned. The teacher is just thirty-eight years old. Last month, she found a lump, and now the doctors have given it a name. They say she has time, but in her situation, time is a fragile thing—not a promise, just a small window of opportunity.
Imagine a huge building with many floors, and on each floor, thirty or forty rooms. Now picture this: every evening, all these rooms have people looking out of the same kind of window. It is not just a few; it is a whole collection of families, all doing the same thing at the same time. And it does not stop there. The next morning, before the sun even comes up, another large group of people will be waiting in line in the corridor, ready to take their turn. This is not just some number or idea; it is real people, standing in a real line, waiting for their chance.
The truth is, things are getting worse. There are many reasons for this—some have been around for a long time, like traditional food preservation methods and person-to-person transmission of bacteria. Then there are newer factors, like the food we eat today, pollution from vehicles, and the chemicals we use. On top of that, there are larger systemic issues: the absence of proper registries, the wait for essential equipment, and the lack of specialist care in rural areas. To truly make a difference, we need to tackle all of these problems together, in a coordinated way. It is not just one simple solution—we need a comprehensive approach that takes everything into account.
Kashmir has been through a great deal. It has survived harsh winters that even the powerful Mughal emperors could not handle, and earthquakes that changed the course of its rivers. The region has also endured decades of violence that pushed its people to their limits. Kashmir will get through this difficult time too—as long as its people are willing to face the truth they have been avoiding for so long.
The chinar tree lives for a hundred years. It does not make that journey by ignoring the soil in which it grows. Neither, now, can the people who have loved its shade.
The writer is a final year Master of Hospital Administration student at Jain University, Bangalore
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