Mumbai, June 24, 2026: Karkinos Healthcare, a 100% step-down subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, has completed HPV DNA screening for over one lakh women across India, marking an important milestone in expanding access to high-quality cervical cancer screening and follow-up care.
Cervical cancer prevention is often limited not only by access to screening, but also by loss to follow-up after a positive result. Karkinos Healthcare’s model addresses both challenges through World Health Organization-recommended HPV DNA testing and a digitally enabled continuum of care that integrates awareness, screening, tracking, triage, navigation, and follow-up.
Commenting on this 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, who has also served as Head, NCI-India, and Chief, DRBRAIRCH-AIIMS.
Ms Sripriya Rao, Chief Growth Officer – Women Wellness, and Head of Distributed Cancer Care Network (DCCN), Karkinos Healthcare, further 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.”
