The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Governor calls for collaborative effort to prevent coronary diseases

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Sunday, Dec 07, 2008
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Governor calls for collaborative effort to prevent coronary diseases

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: Doctors, non-governmental organisations, hospitals and the government should work in close coordination to create awareness among people of the causes that lead to coronary diseases and prevent them, said Governor Surjit Singh Barnala here on Friday. “Keeping in mind the high cost of treating diseases, the trend is to prevent the disease. It has driven the demand for multi-speciality and super specialty health care services,” he said.

Inaugurating the annual Frontier conclave 2008, he said the current healthcare environment and hospitalisation had led to an increased burden on healthcare cost to those with cardiac and other major ailments. Ancient health systems such as yoga, pranayama and naturopathy should be popularised and adopted on a massive scale, he said. “The decoding of the genome has opened up a new world of possibilities in the cure of diabetes and coronary artery disease. The path lies in going back to basic sciences where medicines will give way to physiological treatment through better understanding of the human genome,” Mr. Barnala said.

The future of medicine would see collaboration of engineers, scientists and doctors who would bring their combined knowledge to provide better treatment options, said P. Balaram, director, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.Recalling that such a collaboration of science and medicine had brought to fruition the Sri Chitra heart valve, he said it is important for scientists and medical practitioners to come together as research is about experimenting. Modern biology is about genomics and proteonomics but how to translate them into useful advances of medicine needs to be thought about, he said.

United States Consul General Andrew T. Simkin and Madras University Vice-Chancellor S. Ramachandran felicitated Frontier Lifeline chairman K.M. Cherian.

Dr. Cherian said that the theme of this year’s conclave was genetics.

The theme was chosen to commemorate the memory of three surgeons, John W. Kirklin, Robert B. Karp and Solomon Victor, who inspired and taught him, he said.

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