Excelsior Correspondent
Jammu, June 10: Intens-ifying campaign to aware the common populace about the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases in society, Dr. Sushil Sharma, (HoD Cardiology GMCH & SSH Jammu) today held a day long camp at village Maralia of R S Pura area. He focussed on the association between various co morbidities linked with being obese and the progression of various forms of heart diseases in the general population.
Accompanied by a team of young doctors, paramedics and volunteers, Dr Sharma examined people of the area for prevalence of cardiac diseases and other health ailments. More than 250 people were screened. They were thoroughly evaluated, diagnosed and free medicines were given as per the requirement.
While interacting with the patients, Dr Sushil said “Obesity predisposes an individual to a number of cardiovascular risk factors, including hypertension and elevated blood cholesterol. Recent studies revealed that for a person whose body weight exceeds his recommended weight range by 20% or more, the risk of heart attack is roughly three times greater than that of a person who is within the healthy weight range. This is because overweight and obesity in particular increases one’s chances of developing other contributory factors for cardiovascular disease. The condition is even more worrisome in case of women where obesity is the third most powerful predictor of CVD after age and blood pressure. The risk of heart attack for an obese woman is about three times that of a lean woman of the same age”.
Besides certain non-modifiable factors like heredity , there are certain behaviours like diet high in fat and reduced physical activity that are responsible for obesity in the current settings. Controlling hypertension, cholesterol, and diabetes through medication is useful, but not enough to counteract the harms of overweight and obesity. So we need to need to find creative approaches that can curb and reverse the comorbidities caused by obesity. Keeping in view the linkage associated with obesity and heart diseases, a multilevel and multi sectorial combining programmatic and policy interventions with strategic, culturally appropriate, high-impact messages can change the social norms around eating, physical activity, and healthy life-style behaviours, he exhorted.
Others, who were part of this humane effort, included Dr. Dhaneshwar Kapoor and Dr Kewal Sharma. Paramedics and volunteers, who were part of the team, included Vikas Kumar ,Akshay Kumar, Rajinder Singh, Jagdeep Singh, Bhanu Partap Singh, Gourav Sharma, Raghav Rajput, Rajeev Vohra, Kamal Sharma and Rajkumar.
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