Here’s why heart diseases should be made public health priority in India

New Delhi, Mar 16: A recent survey across 140 districts of the country shows that about 54 per cent of Indians are finding travelling to be unsafe as the deadly coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic sweeps globally.

The big worry that people have is community transmission, something that researchers from around the world have approximated at 10 per cent of total infections and more common in places like Wuhan in China, South Korea, Iran and Italy.

The months of March to June have historically been high travel season for most Indians, largely due to the summer vacations in schools. "But it seems that Indians do not want to take a chance with this rather scary virus and are either cancelling or postponing their travel plans," concluded the survey by LocalCircles.

The survey gathered more than 22,000 responses from participants in tier one, two and three cities. It said 48 per cent Indians plan to cancel their international business travel for the next four months.

Besides, nearly 38 per cent of respondents said they had to pay cancellation fee to the website, travel agent, airline or railways.

"These are testing times for the entire travel and tourism industry -- airlines, hotels, travel agents as well as small tour and taxi operators. The best solution at this point is to adjust cost structures, stay flexible and work with a collective approach to minimise the period of impact to both citizens and business," said LocalCircles.

New Delhi, Jun 24: Expanding the testing criterion for coronavirus, the Indian Council of Medical Research has said it should be made widely available to all symptomatic individuals across the country.

"Since test, track and treat' is the only way to prevent spread of infection and save lives, it is imperative that testing should be made widely available to all symptomatic individuals in every part of the country and contact tracing mechanisms for containment of infection are further strengthened," it said in an advisory on 'Newer Additional Strategies for COVID-19 Testing' on Tuesday.

In its revised testing strategy for COVID-19 issued on May 18, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had advised testing for all symptomatic Influenza-like illness (ILI) among returnees and migrants within seven days of illness.

All hospitalised patients who develop ILI symptoms, symptomatic individuals living within hotspots or containment zones and healthcare and frontline workers involved in containment and mitigation of coronavirus were also advised testing.

The apex health research body has also advised authorities to enable all government and private hospitals, offices and public sector units to perform antibody-based COVID-19 testing for surveillance to help allay fears and anxiety of healthcare workers and office employees.

The earlier advisories on rapid antibody testing advisories had focused on areas reporting clusters (containment zones), large migration gatherings/evacuees centers and testing of symptomatic ILI individuals at facility level.

Besides, the ICMR on Tuesday also recommended deployment of rapid antigen detection tests for COVID-19 in combination with RT-PCR tests in all containment zones, all central and state government medical colleges and government hospitals, all private hospitals approved by the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare (NABH), all NABL-accredited and ICMR approved private labs, for COVID-19 testing.

All hospitals, laboratories and state governments intending to perform the point-of-care antigen tests need to register with ICMR to obtain the login credentials for data entry.

"ICMR advises all state governments, public and private institutions concerned to take required steps to scale up testing for COVID-19 by deploying combination of various tests as advised," the advisory added.

Despite tremendous advances in treatment of congenital heart disease (CHD), a new global study shows that the chances for a child to survive a CHD diagnosis is significantly less in low-income countries.

The research revealed that nearly 12 million people are currently living with CHD globally, 18.7 per cent more than in 1990.

The findings, published in The Lancet, is drawn from the first comprehensive study of congenital heart disease across 195 countries, prepared using data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors Study 2017 (GBD).

"Previous congenital heart estimates came from few data sources, were geographically narrow and did not evaluate CHD throughout the life course," said the study authors from Children's National Hospital in the US.

This is the first time the GBD study data was used along with all available data sources and previous publications - making it the most comprehensive study on the congenital heart disease burden to date.

The study found a 34.5 per cent decline in deaths from congenital disease between 1990 to 2017. Nearly 70 per cent of deaths caused by CHD in 2017 (180,624) were in infants less than one year old.

Most CHD deaths occurred in countries within the low and low-middle socio-demographic index (SDI) quintiles.

Mortality rates get lower as a country's Socio-demographic Index (SDI) rises, the study said.

According to the researchers, birth prevalence of CHD was not related to a country's socio-demographic status, but overall prevalence was much lower in the poorest countries of the world.

This is because children in these countries do not have access to life saving surgical services, they added.

"In high income countries like the United States, we diagnose some heart conditions prenatally during the 20-week ultrasound," said Gerard Martin from Children's National Hospital who contributed to the study.

"For children born in middle- and low-income countries, these data draw stark attention to what we as cardiologists already knew from our own work in these countries -- the lack of diagnostic and treatment tools leads to lower survival rates for children born with CHD," said researcher Craig Sable.

"The UN has prioritised reduction of premature deaths from heart disease, but to meet the target of 'ending preventable deaths of newborns and children under 5 years of age,' health policy makers will need to develop specific accountability measures that address barriers and improve access to care and treatment," the authors wrote.