Working journalists in Karachi are more prone to having stroke as compared to common citizens of Pakistan as ratio of obesity, usage of tobacco and lack of exercise is more common among working journalists while they also remain under stress and pressures due to nature of their jobs, it was revealed at a medical screening camp held at Karachi Press Club (KPC).
The medical screening camp was organised by the Health Committee of Karachi Press Club (KPC) in collaboration with Neurology Awareness and Research Foundation (NARF) in connection with World Stroke Day. Every year, world stroke day is observed on October 29 to highlight the causes and risk factors leading to stroke and to create awareness among people for living a healthy life to avoid risks of having stroke.
"We have found around 60-70 percent working journalists as either obese or being over-weight, majority of them admitted that they regularly smoke or chew tobacco while hardly any of them walks regularly," revealed Dr Muhammad Wasey, President of NARF who provided free consultancy to working journalists at the screening camp.
Journalists and their family members were screened or hypertension, sugar, cholesterol, Body Mass Index (BMI), Visceral Fat and Obesity and during the camp, results of medical examinations revealed that most of the persons who were screened had several risk factors for having either, stroke, heart ailments or both.
Dr Muhammad Wasey said around 200 journalists were screened for the risk factors of the stroke and of them, majority was found to be either obese or over-weight, which shows that they have a sedentary lifestyle while they also don't exercise to keep their bodies in shape and control their weight.
"Obesity is one of the major risk factors of stroke. It leads to hypertension and diabetes, which result in stroke and heart attacks. We recommend people to control their weight by eating less, walking more so that they could prevent themselves from stroke and heart attack," Dr Muhammad Wasey added.
Expert neurologists claimed that around 24 percent Pakistani population was either obese or overweight while around 400 persons die daily in Pakistan due to stroke, which is a seriously alarming situation and added that sedentary lifestyle, lack of exercise and growing use of tobacco products were some of the major risk factors for causing diabetes and hypertension leading to stroke.
Another renowned neurologist and Secretary of NARF Dr Abdul Malik said every day, 1000 people were having stroke due to their poor and sedentary lifestyle and added that those who survived the stroke, got disabled for rest of their lives. He deplored that only 10 percent hospitals in Pakistan had neurology wards and departments where stroke patients could be treated while number of people having risk factors was on the rise and in coming days, stroke would be the fourth leading cause of death and disability in Pakistan.-PR