The department has just finished collecting data for the study, said Dr J S Thakur. “We have surveyed 400 people in the city, the surrounding slums and nearby rural areas in Haryana. We found that the risk factors for CVDs are almost at par in the rural and urban areas. At some places, this traditional divide has also reversed.”

Another study by the department titled ‘Cardiovascular Disease Risk Management in a Primary Healthcare Setting of North India’, published in the Indian Heart Journal 2008, also establishes the trend.

The study covered 1,010 people from eight selected pockets in Haryana and Chandigarh. Of those surveyed, 253 were from the urban areas, 375 from the rural areas and 382 were slum-dwellers. The study found that one of the major risk factors for CVD —hypertension or high blood pressure — has a similar prevalence among all categories.

“The burden of cardiovascular diseases is on the rise in developing countries. We found a high prevalence of hypertension among 30-year-olds not only in the urban population (36.4 per cent) but also among slum-dwellers (25.4 per cent) and in the rural areas (24 per cent). Therefore, the primary healthcare system should be empowered for management of CVDs,” notes the study.

Smoking, a crucial factor putting the younger population at risk for heart attack, had a much higher incidence in rural areas (40.8 per cent) than in urban areas (15 per cent) and slums (32.2 per cent).

Also, 11.2 per cent of respondents from the rural areas were overweight, 4.2 per cent suffered from probable angina and 0.5 per cent from probable stroke.

Over 27 per cent in the slums were categorised as overweight while the overall rate of obesity in the general population was found to be over 23 per cent.

Explaining the trend, Head of the Cardiology Department at PGI, Dr Yash Paul said: “The upward graph of CVDs in rural areas signifies the changing lifestyle of the population. A few years ago, 2-4 per cent of the people in rural areas suffered from CVDs while this figure has now risen to 6-8 per cent. More and more of the youth re coming in. Our observations have found that CVD affects around 10-14 per cent of the urban population and the rural areas have started to match that figure now. This is due to less physical exercise, more calorie intake and smoking among the rural population.”