Emphasising that cardiovascular diseases are not restricted to the urban population, a recent study by the Department of Community Medicine, PGI, states that hypertension and the risk factors relating to lifestyle diseases have crept into the country’s slum population and the rural areas as well.

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.

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