Here is your short paragraph on Heart Diseases in India!
According to a study conducted by a team of researchers led by Denis Xavier of St. John’s National Academy of Health Sciences in Bangalore in April 2008, it was revealed that by 2010, India will carry 60 per cent of the world’s heart disease burden, nearly four times more than its share of the global population.
Adding to the burden was a higher incidence of the types of heart disease resulting in serious illness and mortality, and the fact that these conditions stuck at an earlier age.
Death rates were found to be high among the India’s poorest residents, unable to get to hospital quickly in an emergency, or to afford routine treatments and surgery.
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Ischaemic heart disease, mainly heart attacks and coronary artery disease was found to be the leading cause of mortality in the world, accounting for 7.1 million deaths in 2001. More than 80 per cent of these were reported in developing countries.
The researchers gathered data on nearly 21,000 coronary patients admitted to 89 hospitals in 50 cities across India. They found that of 20,468 patients given a definite diagnosis, 60 per cent showed evidence of a heart attack, compared with 40 per cent in developing countries. With a average age of 60, these Indian patients were also younger by three to six years than their counterparts in richer nations.
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The risk factors-which include tobacco use, high levels of lipids in the blood due to diets rich in saturated fat and hypertension-were the same as elsewhere, but the gap between India and developed nations had more specific causes, the study found.
One was simply the time needed for patients suffering an acute heart problem to get medical help. On average, it took 300 minutes to reach a hospital in India, twice as long as in rich nations. Poverty also prevented most patients in India from obtaining routine treatments in hospital, noted the study.