KARACHI, March 15: Heart diseases, which were comparatively little known before World War-II, have plagued the lives of people who fall prey to the disease as they labour under tremendous societal pressures.
This was stated by the chairman of the National Congress of Preventive Cardiology 2003, Prof Mansoor Ahmad, at the opening ceremony of the congress at the Convention Centre of the Liaquat National Hospital on Saturday morning.
He said: “Few families are not familiar with heart diseases these days. These diseases were not very common before the Second World War. We remained unaffected by these diseases till the 1970s. But now these diseases are fast making their presence felt in this part of the world.”
Dr Ahmad pointed out that a host of factors, including genetic factors and environmental factors, are responsible for such a sharp rise in the incidence of the disease.
“Smoking and consumption of tobacco are also the cause of heart diseases. They are on the decrease in the West but unfortunately no effort is being made to stop young people from becoming addicted to smoking.”
In his speech, the secretary of the Pakistan Cardiac Society, Prof Abdus Sammad, put stress on what he called preventive cardiology.
He spoke about two studies conducted in the US and Germany which sought to find out what steps should be taken to prevent heart diseases from afflicting people.
Speaking about a study of the similar nature conducted in Pakistan, he said: “Disease pattern in Pakistan is different from the disease pattern in the West. First, the size of families is, on average, greater in Pakistan than in the West. Second, male heart patients are mostly the sole breadwinners of their families whose death have a devastating effect on the entire family.”
Prof Hamid Shafqat said that medical professionals had come a long way. “When I was a student, we used to hold seminars and conferences on cholera and tuberculosis. One-third of our wards used to be filled with TB patients and another one-third with cholera patients. These diseases have been eliminated to a large extent. But heart diseases have replaced them.”
He added in the past people did not have heart diseases because they were so poor that they could not afford to have the kind of food that was responsible for heart diseases.
The chief justice of the Sindh High Court, Justice Syed Saeed-ul-Ashhad, said that cardiovascular deaths accounted for a large number of deaths in our hospitals.
He pointed out that everyday a large number of people died of heart diseases because they could not have any medical assistance, at times because medicines are exorbitantly expensive. He said that the incidence of heart diseases had risen manifold over the past 25 years.
“Tensions of modern life on account of modernization and urbanization and opening of a number of eateries are also responsible for the spread of heart disease. Smoking, which has been controlled in the West, unfortunately continues to be on the rise in Pakistan.”
