The health ministry wants to review public cancer screening tests by local governments because an increasing number of them are performing examinations of unconfirmed effectiveness, according to ministry sources.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry is concerned that local governments are conducting tests, such as for prostate cancer, that are unproven in reducing mortality rates amid slow growth in tests that have been proven effective, such as breast cancer checks using mammography.
It wants to promote more effective tests and keep a lid on costs as local government spending on cancer screening has topped 50 billion yen a year, the sources said.
A ministry study group found that only 48.2 percent of cities, towns and villages polled recently conducted mammography checks for breast cancer despite the ministry's 2001 certification that mammography is effective in reducing breast cancer mortality.
It found 32.9 percent of the respondents conducted prostate cancer tests by checking for prostate-specific antigen despite the fact that it reserved judgment on effectiveness due to a lack of data. The figure was up from 18.4 percent in 2000.
The group's survey on implementation of six relatively new types of cancer screening was conducted in February.