Introduction Non-communicable diseases (eg, cancer) have become a high profile issue for healthcare delivery planners in India. In view of limited resources, there is a need for an integrated approach to the control of cancers with common aetiologies. Cancer of the uterine cervix is one of the leading malignancies in Indian women. The present exercise attempts to study the relationship between cervical cancer and tobacco related cancers based on the age adjusted incidence rates as generated from reports of National Cancer Registry Programme of ICMR.

Methods Correlation analysis between the age adjusted rates of cancer of uterine cervix and tobacco related cancers such as mouth, oesophagus, lung were conducted for the three population based cancer registries at Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai. Multivariate analysis was used for the relationship between cervical cancer with smoking habits based on the data generated through the ICMR study.

Results Results revealed that adjusted OR associated with development of cervical cancer among smokers was found to be of the order of 4. There was a strong relationship between trends in cervical cancer with oral cancer and oesophageal cancer ranging from 0.4 to 0.8 (p<0.05) substantiating the fact of a common aetiology.

Conclusion The tobacco control programs which are a priority with government of India's National Cancer Control Program could also target cervical cancer control.