Healthcare system in Pakistan is incapable of treating even one-third of patients with cardiovascular diseases where around 50 people are dying every hour due to heart attacks and other diseases of cardiovascular system in the country, eminent cardiologists and health experts said on Saturday and called for collaborative efforts to promote preventive cardiology with focus on lifestyle modifications and eliminating or reducing risk factors for the cardiac ailments.
They were speaking at a day-long national conference on preventive cardiology "Cardio Prevent 2019", organized by the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD), Karachi in collaboration with a local pharmaceutical company in connection with World Heart Day 2019.
Top of the line cardiologists from not only Karachi but other cities of Pakistan including Peshawar attended the moot and stressed the need for promoting preventive cardiology in the country to lower the burden of heart patients from the healthcare system.
Experts deplored that number of people, especially youngsters dying due to cardiovascular disease in Pakistan was alarmingly on the rise as over 1100 people were daily losing their lives due to heart attacks in Pakistan where obesity, hypertension and diabetes were increasing day by day due to physical inactivity while childhood obesity was also very high because of sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy diet.
On the occasion, the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Pakistani multinational Getz Pharma for the promotion of preventive cardiology, promoting healthy lifestyle and other measures as part of a joint preventive cardiology programme in the country.
Speaking on the occasion, the Executive Director NICVD, Professor Nadeem Qamar said although they were treating the bulk of cardiovascular patients in Pakistan through main NICVD and its dozens of Satellite Centres and Chest Pain Units, they were so far failed in reducing the number of cardiovascular patients by educating and convincing the people to take measures to prevent themselves from heart ailments.
"Now we have launched an aggressive preventive cardiology programme which is being led by Professor Khawar Kazmi and we have lots of plan to promote preventive cardiology in the country", he maintained.