AS though there wasn’t already enough for Pakistanis to worry about, the 50th Cardiocon of the Pakistan Cardiac Society that was held in Karachi on Thursday added another dimension. Specialists warned that the country is facing “an epidemic of cardiovascular diseases”, amongst many other ailments related to lifestyle choices. The manifold increase within the past few years of patients aged between 25 and 40 visiting hospitals with cardiac-related issues was, they said, a “very conservative estimate” of the growing extent of the problem. This exacerbates already known crises such as the fact that the prevalence of diabetes has increased by 150pc over the past two years, while half the country’s adult population is hypertensive. At fault, the doctors were at pains to point out, were lifestyle choices such as poor diet, physical inactivity, and smoking, all of which were increasing in the adult but far from aging population. Eminent interventionist cardiologist Prof Javed Akbar Sial presented a frightening case: “I remember that the youngest patient with a heart attack who was brought to the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases was a 17-year-old boy who had the heart attack due to heavy smoking and obesity.”

This last may be dismissed as an aberration, of the sort that can occur anywhere. Nevertheless, it is hard to not see the obviousness of the conference’s conclusion that increasingly sedentary lifestyles are amongst the most significant causes of a situation where relatively young people — especially in urban areas — are facing cardiac crises. It’s a knotty situation. Urbanisation added to poor city planning means fewer open spaces where physical activity can be indulged in, while the charms of technology such as the internet and TV keep us cosily in our seats. Poor diets can be traced, apart from lifestyle choices, to the growing availability of processed foods and a decreasing awareness about nutritional sufficiency versus food scarcity. Project this on an already overburdened healthcare sector, and we have a ticking time bomb.

Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2021