Health aNd Fitness Guide

India is expected to bear 60 per cent of the burden of heart disease by 2010. Indian and Canadian researchers studied around 21,000 heart attack patients across 89 hospitals in India. Hypertension, smoking and high cholesterol were among the risk factors, but certain factors were specific to India, accessibility to health care being one — it took an average 300 minutes for a patient to reach hospital in an emergency (140-170 minutes in developed nations). The other factors were patients rarely using ambulances and the high cost of surgeries.