President Asif Ali Zardari has recently signed the National Institutes of Health Reorganization Amendment Bill 2025. The legislation authorizes the setup of Pakistan’s first national cancer registry and will restructure the NIH for enhanced performance and governance.

The registry is designed to collect, in a centralized database, vital cancer information including confirmed cases, deaths, recoveries, pending hospital cases, and patient demographics such as age, gender, and location. Importantly, individual patient details will remain confidential unless explicit consent is provided.

By merging fragmented data from existing regional registries into one unified system, the registry will enable health authorities to accurately assess cancer’s scale. This data will guide the development of a national action plan for prevention, early detection, and treatment.

The reorganization of NIH is expected to foster better institutional performance, promote data-driven policymaking, and elevate coordination of cancer control efforts. Stakeholders view this as a critical step toward better institutional capacity and improved public health response to the rising cancer burden in Pakistan.