WORLD Heart Day has come and gone, but the warnings sounded by medical experts should echo far beyond a single date. At a seminar in Islamabad this week, leading cardiologists drew attention to an alarming reality: cardiovascular disease is no longer confined to the elderly. Doctors are increasingly seeing patients in their 30s and 40s with serious conditions — even heart attacks — once confined to old age. This is no small concern. Cardiovascular disease causes nearly 23pc of all deaths in Pakistan, according to the Global Burden of Disease Study, with related deaths having doubled in three decades. The number of citizens living with heart disease has surged from 4.1m in 1990 to 8.6m in 2019 — a staggering rise in less than a generation. If this trend continues unchecked, the economic, social and healthcare costs will be immense.

The culprits are well known: smoking, poor diet, lack of exercise, uncontrolled blood pressure, unmanaged diabetes and rising stress. These are modifiable risks. Prevention does not lie in complex technologies or unaffordable treatments, but in attainable lifestyle changes — balanced eating, daily physical activity, quitting tobacco, regular check-ups and careful adherence to prescribed medication. Yet, public health campaigns around these remain sporadic and underfunded. The onus is not only on individuals. Successive governments, too, have failed to address the driving forces behind this crisis. The absence of safe public spaces for exercise, limited access to affordable healthy food and weak primary care services all conspire to keep risk factors high. Meanwhile, prevention rarely receives the political priority accorded to curative, high-profile hospital interventions. World Heart Day is supposed to raise awareness. It should do more: remind policymakers that heart disease, though preventable, is becoming a defining affliction of Pakistan’s next generation. Without urgent changes, the country will be living on borrowed time.

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2025