The World Heart Day celebration by the World Heart Federation and its allies has created some sensation amongst the healthcare workers throughout the globe since

1999. It is comprised of 195 member societies of cardiology and heart foundations from over 100 countries covering the regions of Africa, the Americas, Asia-Pacific and Europe. World Heart Day was created to inform people around the globe that heart disease and stroke are the world.s leading cause of death, claiming 17.2 million lives each year.The number of participating organisations, institutes and people are increasing year after year. This specific campaign has created lots of good palpable changes in the world. As we all want to have a ..Healthy Heart.. everywhere, so the influence of this ..World Heart Day.. has touched the hearts of Indian population as well.

Journal of Indian Medical Association takes the opportunity to commemorate the occasion with the desire to motivate and involve our doctors in the movement; so with this modest attempt we would like to dedicate this issue on World Heart Day.

India passed the one-billion-person mark sometime in

2000. Major government and NGO efforts to decrease the fertility rate have helped to slow the rate of population growth to 1.7%. However, even with the rate continuing to slow, India.s population will grow by at least another 200 million people by 2020. Rising life expectancy has also created a growing number of Indians 60 years of age or older (7.8%). Despite rapid urbanization in recent years, nearly two-thirds of the Indian population continues to reside in rural areas. Urbanisation and industrialisation are changing the patterns of living in ways that increase the behavioural and biological risk levels in the population.

India is experiencing a rapid transition, with large and rising burdens of chronic diseases, which were estimated to account for 53% of all deaths in 2005. Earlier estimates projected that the number of deaths attributable to chronic diseases would rise from 37. 8 million in 1990 ( 40.4% of all deaths) to 7.63 million in 2020 ( 66.7 % of all deaths)1.

The rapid growth of the Indian economy has created opportunities for many Indians. It has also contributed to a number of social problems as the traditional agrarian society tries to adapt to urbanisation and a changing economic order. India.s disease burden is increasing as a result of higher incidences of chronic, non communicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer and diabetes. Tobacco use is also increasing, especially among youths. Prevention of diseases is the most cost-effective strategy for improving health, especially for a country like India constrained by scarce resources.

Our economy is growing at 7% per year. With increasing life expectancy, the proportion of the population older than 35 years is expected to rise from 28% in 1981 to 42% in 20212.

The WHO has prepared updated mortality projections from 2003 to 2030 and also undertaken a reassessment of global burden of diseases (GBD).

It is reported that about 29.8 million people were estimated to have coronary heart diseases in India in 2003,

14. 1 million in urban areas and 15.7 million in rural areas3.

An excess risk of death from coronary disease has been observed in men and women of South Asian origin, by comparison with other ethnic groups, and there is I progressive rise in risk from rural to urban migrant environment4.

The prevalence of stroke is thought to be 203 per 1, 00, 000 population among people older than 20 years5.

Taking this background, JIMA has planned to propagate the message of caution to the doctors of the country. Our first endeavour was to publish the special issue on stroke in June 2009 and we have something more in the next issues to come including one on diabetes. In this particular issue we have tried to incorporate all important problems of heart ailments we are facing and a specially designed, highly enthusiastic transradial angioplasty opportunity together. Our aim is to reach all the four .Domains. of life viz, at workplace, in transport, at home and during recreation time. Let us talk heath of the heart and work with heart not only on a particular day, always and at all places.

REFERENCES

1 Murray CJL, Lopez AD . Global Health Statistics: Global Burden of Diseases and Injury Series, Boston MA. Harvard School of Public Health, 1996.

2 Reddy KS . Cardiovascular disease in India. World Health Stat Q 1993; 46: 101-10.

3 Gupta R, Ghaffar A, Reddy KS, Singhvi M . Rapid response to burden of non communicable disease in South Asia. BMJ 2004; 328: 807-10.

4 Bhatnagar D, Anand JS, Durrington PN, Patel DJ, Wander GS, Mackness MI, et al . Coronary risk factors in people from the Indian subcontinent living in west London and their siblings in India. Lancet 1995; 345: 405-9.

5 Anand K, Chowdhury D, Singh KB, Pandav CS, Kapoor SK .

Estimation of mortality and morbidity due to strokes in India.

Neuroepidemiology 2001; 20: 208-11.

Hony Editor, JIMA,
Kolkata 700014