Pakistani children and youngsters are programmed to have heart diseases, diabetes mellitus and hypertension as compared to other ethnic groups in the world due to their genes. At the same time, because of their unhealthy lifestyle, children as young as 12 to 18 years of age are having high blood pressure and diabetes while young man and women in their late 20s are and early 30s are dying due to heart attacks. President of Pakistan Cardiac Society (PCS), Prof Feroz Memon said this while addressing a news conference at his office on Thursday
On the occasion, Pakistan Cardiac Society and the Health Research Advisory Board (HealthRab) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU), through which HealthRab would finance 4th Cardiology Research Award in order to promote research in the field cardiology. As per MoU, top three researchers would be given cash awards on their papers during the annual conference of PCS to be held at Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology (AFIC) in October-November this year.
"We have come to know that Pakistanis are having heart attacks, hypertension and diabetes a lot earlier as compared to other ethnic groups. This is because of their genetic characteristics as well as their lifestyle," Prof Memon said.
He said that due to awareness and lifestyle modifications, people in other parts of the world were living healthy lives and their rate of having Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD) was reducing while in Pakistan, ratio of people having heart diseases was constantly on the rise, which should be alarming for the nation as well as authorities.
"In order to save our future generations, we have decided to promote the culture of research in the area of cardiology and in this regard, HealthRab is helping us for last three years. We hope that this research and data collected by our young researchers would help us in saving thousands of lives annually," he added.