Karkinos Healthcare, a 100% step-down subsidiary of Reliance Industries, has crossed a major public health milestone—completing HPV DNA screening for over one lakh women across India. This signals a sharp scale-up in cervical cancer prevention and early detection efforts.
The achievement also highlights growing access to organised cervical cancer screening in a country where late detection and weak follow-up have long driven preventable deaths. Cervical cancer prevention, experts note, is constrained not just by limited screening coverage but by the high rate of patients lost to follow-up after abnormal results.
Karkinos’ model aims to close both gaps by combining World Health Organization-recommended HPV DNA testing with a digitally enabled continuum of care. The system integrates awareness, screening, tracking, triage, navigation, and follow-up—designed to ensure women are not only tested but also guided through diagnosis and treatment where required.
Commenting on the milestone, Dr Neerja Bhatla, Consultant, Early Detection and Women Wellness, Karkinos Healthcare, who is also a Padma Shri awardee and globally acclaimed leader in women’s health and oncology, said, “The evidence has been clear for some time that HPV DNA testing is the most reliable primary screen we have for cervical cancer."
"What matters now is not testing at scale alone but also ensuring that every woman who tests positive is carried through to diagnosis and treatment across the care continuum. A program that can demonstrate that linkage at this volume, and well beyond the big cities, is exactly the direction India’s cervical cancer elimination effort needs.”
“For decades, the obstacle in this country has not been our understanding of cervical cancer; it has been the reach. Bringing a high-quality test to women in districts and small towns and then carrying them through the system rather than leaving them with only a result, is how a public-health gain is actually made. This is the model that has to scale,” added Dr Goura Kishore Rath, Senior Oncology Advisor, Karkinos Healthcare.
Sripriya Rao, Chief Growth Officer – Women Wellness and Head of Distributed Cancer Care Network (DCCN), Karkinos Healthcare, said, “Every one of these one lakh tests represents a woman who was met where she was. The measure of this work is not how many women we reached, but how many we did not lose along the way, and whether we did it with dignity, and sustainably, for women who have historically been the last to be served. That is the standard we hold ourselves to.”
“At Karkinos, we dedicate this milestone to the late Dr R. Sankaranarayanan, fondly known to us as ‘Shankar Sir’, whose scientific leadership and unwavering conviction in early detection laid the foundation for this work."
The milestone has been achieved through a mix of implementation models across India, including public health programmes, public-private partnerships, CSR-supported initiatives, nurse-assisted and self-sampling drives, district-level screening, and targeted outreach in underserved and high-risk communities.
A significant portion of women screened came from areas where access to preventive healthcare is limited, underscoring the reach of distributed care models. The company says the results demonstrate that large-scale HPV DNA testing, combined with structured follow-up systems, can be effectively delivered in India through technology-led healthcare pathways.
Cervical cancer remains one of the most preventable cancers. With timely screening, early detection, and proper follow-up care, most deaths can be avoided—making expanded access to reliable screening one of the most critical opportunities in women’s health today.
