The belief that heart disease is a matter of age is changing: many people aged 25-30 to 45 are now admitted with blocked arteries or severe heart attacks. The picture is clearest at the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases and Hospital in Dhaka, the only specialised government heart hospital, Amar Desh reports.
The hospital's figures for January to August show an average of about 694 patients a month, 23 a day, died under treatment. The emergency department saw about 17,311 patients a month (570 a day) and about 10,230 a month were admitted (337 a day). Over the eight months, 138,490 people were treated in the emergency department.
Bangladesh has no reliable figures on annual heart deaths, cases or babies born with heart defects. Cardiologists estimate more than 205,000 people die of heart disease each year, about a million fall ill with it and more than 15 million live with it. National Heart Foundation Hospital data put heart disease behind about 34 percent of all deaths, with one in five people at risk of premature heart disease.
Experts say heredity combined with poor diet, smoking, lack of exercise, excess weight, high blood pressure and stress is raising the risk among young people, and urge regular health check-ups from before the age of 25.
Heart screening is more common than before, the report says, but most district-level government hospitals lack the facilities and specialist services for heart care, so patients from outside Dhaka must travel to the capital. At the institute, long queues formed at the ticket counter, outpatient and emergency departments, with patients and relatives waiting in corridors and on the floor.
Photo: Wasiul Bahar / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Amar Desh
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