Are women less prone to heart diseases than men? The answer to this question seems to be changing rapidly. Every four seconds a woman is dying with heart disease in the world. Death due to Cardio Vascular Disease (CVD) among women was 20 times more than death due to breast cancer.
According to an alarming bit of statistics about 30 lakh women are dying every year due to heart diseases in India. What is more alarming is that 66 per cent of them die because of late diagnosis. The CVD being seen as a man’s disease is fast becoming a dangerous misconception costing the lives of many women, according to Ramesh Hospital Chief Cardiologist P. Ramesh Babu.
Campaign
The Queen of Heart Express Campaign highlights the growth in the incidence of the CVD among women. The campaign is an initiative of Biocon Company and has the support of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Indian Public Health Association, Help Age India, FICCI Ladies Organisation and Heal Foundation.
A team of theatre artistes staged performances with themes focusing on heart diseases among Indian women. They explained effectively the atypical manifestation and prevalence of the CVD in women.
The theatre artists reached the city on Monday in the Queen of Heart Express - a Mini Bus, which was flagged off by Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on the World Heart Day. The Express would cover 20,000 km. contacting 2 lakh people. The bus has visited Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Kota, Ajmer, Rajkot, Ranchi, Indore, Kanpur, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Coimbatore before reaching here.
Several city-based cardiologists participated in the programmes conducted by the team of artistes and extended their support to the campaign. Cardiologists participating in it included N. Murali Krishna of KIMS, Praveen of Praveen Cardiac Centre and P. Bhaskar Naidu of Ramesh Hospitals.