Excelsior Correspondent
Jammu, Dec 24: Stressing socio-economic indicators as an important variable in influencing the health scenario of the State, Dr Sushil Sharma today highlighted this important theme while conducting a day long camp in block Bhalwal of Mishriwala area, as a part of his awareness drive at the initiative of Vishwakarma Temple Committee.
More than 200 people were examined and free medicines were given as per the requirement. While elaborating upon this issue, he maintained that cardiovascular diseases were once thought to be impacting the rich and affluent, but it is now well established they afflict the poor as well.
“The issue of access and affordability account for higher mortality amongst the urban poor and rural population. While there is increasing availability and focus on curative care in urban areas, the issue in rural India is relatively complex and is one of improving awareness, access and affordability. The lack of awareness coupled with inadequate access to diagnosis leads to a very large number of patients needing tertiary care. The shortage of such high end facilities as well as their inability to pay leads to high mortality among the rural population, Dr Sharma, HoD cardiology in the GMC’’, said.
The urban poor and the rural people fall into a vicious cycle, already suffering from long term material deprivation, unhealthy living conditions and high levels of stress, they are more prone to risky behaviour like smoking and drinking. This leads to the early onset of cardiac diseases amongst them. They tend to ignore the disease due to poor access to health care and high cost of treatment, and even if they do choose to go for medical treatment, it involved large out of pockets payments. Such expenditure referred to as catastrophic expenditure pushes near about 39 million Indians into poverty every year
Others who were part of this drive included Dr Dhaneshwar Kapoor, Dr Anitipal Singh and Dr Kewal Sharma. Paramedics and volunteers included Vikas Kumar, Kamal Sharma, Raghav Rajput, Aman Gupta, Akshay Gupta, Amandeep Singh, Jagdeep Singh,Vikas Sabharwal, Ankush Kohli, Rajeev Vohra, Manoj Sharma and Raj Kumar.
Follow our WhatsApp channel
